Those of us raised in the ‘com­puter age’ for­get to mar­vel at the incred­i­ble inno­va­tions we’ve seen and how they’ve trans­formed our lives. Appli­ca­tions and devices add com­plex, amaz­ing fea­tures every day and we barely blink an eye.

Let’s take a moment to mar­vel at one small inno­va­tion: The response video. But first, con­sider one of its ear­lier incarnations–the answer song. The answer song (as I dis­cov­ered on CBC’s Vinyl Tap) is a song made in response to another song. So, Mary Wells records My Guy and a year later, in response, The Temp­ta­tions record My Girl (turns out Smokey Robin­son wrote both songs).

Hip Hop’s (Warn­ing: Major NSFW!) ver­sion of the answer song takes a slightly dif­fer­ent turn. So, Hip Hop star Khia records (War­ing: Major NSFW!) My Neck My Back in praise of female sex­u­al­ity and frankly cun­nilin­gus, and Too Short cooks up a misog­y­nis­tic response enti­tled (War­ing: Major NSFW!) My Dick My Sack. Well, we’ve trav­eled some dis­tance from the My Guy/My Girl era. Mov­ing on.

What’s involved in com­ing up with an ‘answer’ song?

A per­son has to hear a song, then go into a record­ing stu­dio, then cut a track and get it out there. There’s a lot of time lost between inspi­ra­tion and response. And time is of the essence for those of us who get itchy wait­ing for the bank machine to spit out our money–never mind the teller from days of yore.

Con­tinue »

photo credit: smemon87

Once upon a time, I thought I wanted to be a PR pro­fes­sional. I suited up and went for an inter­view at Hum­ber College’s Pub­lic Rela­tions program.

The first inter­view ques­tion was “did you bring a resume?” I real­ized I had failed the first PR inter­view test. I didn’t have all the nec­es­sary doc­u­men­ta­tion with me. Bad PR girl. Bad.

I thought the next best thing would be to fax my resume over the moment I got home. Seemed like a good PR professional-type thing to do. Moments after I faxed it, I took a big gulp and real­ized that the resume I had sent looked like a dog’s breakfast–bullets every­where, boo-boos galore.

I waved good­bye to my PR career (thank goodness).

The impulse to act quickly with­out suf­fi­cient con­tem­pla­tion doesn’t serve me well in print. But it turns out, it makes me a bet­ter blog­ger. My “just get it done” approach means that I actu­ally pub­lish blog posts. I don’t just think about them, I don’t write drafts and save them and con­tem­plate. I hit the pub­lish but­ton and put the good-word “out there.”

Yes, some­times I make gram­mat­i­cal errors or things don’t work quite the way I’d hoped. But, I believe my approach is bet­ter than any other because at least peo­ple get to read my posts. They live in the world.

And, I’ve come up with some tricks for how to be a pro­lific blog­ger with­out mak­ing myself, or Hypenotic look bad:

• Sched­ule time to blog: Make a com­mit­ment and block off the time in your calendar.
• It’s not extra: You can’t think of it as some­thing you’ll get around to when you have some free time. Blog­ging is part of your job.
• Keep Notes: You’d be amazed how quickly a good idea for a blog post can evap­o­rate from your mem­ory bank. I’m con­vinced some of my best blog posts have been the vic­tim of mem­ory fail­ure. Keep a note­book and jot down ideas as they come.
• Look Around: Inspi­ra­tion is every­where. The more stuff you expose your­self to, the more con­tent you’ll come up with. That’s why mag­a­zines and movies are write-off’s, they’re there to inspire you. Even indi­rectly. At the very least, set up a really good google reader and update it regularly.
• Mix it Up: Not every post has to be a dis­ser­ta­tion on a sub­ject. Give your­self per­mis­sion to write some really short blog posts.
• Hit Pub­lish: Don’t over­think it. Don’t save it as a draft for fur­ther (and fur­ther) con­tem­pla­tion. Just pub­lish your post. If you want to amend it, you can do that later. If you want to add to it, you can write another post as a vari­a­tion of the same topic.
• Have Other Peo­ple Read and Edit your Work: We have a pol­icy around the office. I ask peo­ple to read my blog posts. If they see a boo-boo, I ask them to just go in and change it. They don’t need to point out my mis­takes (who likes that any­way?). So, my work is per­fected when I’m not even looking.

What tips do you have to get­ting down to the busi­ness of blogging?

Every employee in your orga­ni­za­tion is in the mar­ket­ing department.

That means that no mat­ter how much money you spend on adver­tis­ing (or social media, PR, direct mail, etc.) your employ­ees’ feel­ings about where they work cre­ates the most sig­nif­i­cant impres­sion on consumers.

As Seth Godin points out, if you’ve ever walked into an Apple Store you’ll know what I mean. I think I have a crush on every sin­gle guy who works there. Help­ful­ness is so sexy. But I digress.…

I just spent some time in Muskoka at Touch­stone Resort. To put it plainly, Touchstone is a fancy place.

What does fancy mean? Well, there’s a guy who comes and grooms the beach daily, a gym, salt water pool, daily house­keep­ing and (get this) call and book ahead and some­one will come to build a fire for you right at the beach. THEY BUILD YOU A FIRE. Amaz­ing, right?

I think you get that this is not typ­i­cal cot­tage living.

Touch­stone also sells cottages–whole cot­tages or frac­tional own­er­ship. And, while I didn’t expe­ri­ence any heavy handed salesy stuff, I did notice that they offer a free ‘Day­ca­tion’ visit to any­one inter­ested in hav­ing a look around the place. Make no mis­take about it, they want to make a favourable impres­sion on those who visit because they want you to buy. Con­tinue »

In April my friend Leanne Cop­pen died of Her2 breast cancer.

She was only 38 and had been diag­nosed only 2 years ear­lier. She did the 60K Week­end to End Women’s Can­cers after her can­cer had metas­ta­sized. That’s a long way for any­one to walk. But for some­one who had been through over a year of treat­ment, it’s down­right incred­i­ble. Here’s a short video of Leanne’s walk last year that was part of the ori­en­ta­tion mate­ri­als Princess Mar­garet makes avail­able online:

Now, let’s put all that sad stuff behind us for a moment.

Leanne was an amaz­ing writer who blogged about Liv­ing with Breast Can­cer for Chate­laine mag­a­zine. I was recently read­ing her blog posts and stum­bled upon a post where she wrote about going for a run in the midst of her treat­ment cycle. If you want to be blown away by a woman you never had the plea­sure of meet­ing read the post here.

She was the ideal poster child for my upcom­ing Walk to End Women’ Can­cers. Because I’m a big wimp, I’ll only be walk­ing 32K in one day, not the 60K she walked over the course of a week­end last year. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be walk­ing at all, I’d be sit­ting on my couch Tweet­ing or some­thing.

When I first started talk­ing to peo­ple about doing the walk I envi­sioned I would start walk­ing and then not stop for like a really, really long time. Kinda like For­est Gump. Then peo­ple started ask­ing, “are you train­ing?” and warn­ing “that’s a long walk you know.” The kind peo­ple at work even mapped it and then told me that it was like walk­ing to York Mills and back downtown.

At first I was taken aback. I signed up for a class at the Run­ning Room, bought new shoes, and a book on walk­ing. I’ve been try­ing to walk reg­u­larly as I head towards the big day on Sep­tem­ber 11^th.

But more than any­thing that damn blog post has kept me moti­vated. How could a woman who had endured rounds upon rounds of gru­elling can­cer treat­ment walk 60K and train while neck deep in shit? Well she did. And frankly she did it with a smile. And so healthy, lucky me is totally con­fi­dent that I can do a measly 32K with a smile firmly planted on my face too.

And, if you can’t walk, I’m pretty con­fi­dent you can donate. I know that’s pushy. But hell, I’m going to be pushy about this one.

I’ve received let­ters about The Week­end before and frankly ignored them. But now I know bet­ter. And so do you.

To make a dona­tion (of any size) click here http://​www​.end​cancer​.ca/​g​o​t​o​/​J​o​d​i​L​a​stman

Had a fun run-in with a day camp staffer who informed me that I would not be able to receive a refund for a camp posi­tion my daugh­ter would no longer need.

I wasn’t charged an admin­is­tra­tive fee to cover the costs of fill­ing the posi­tion again (there’s a wait­ing list). This was a puni­tive slap on the arse no money back guar­an­tee. Let me repeat. No. Money. Back.

And this from a camp that sent my daugh­ter home with the lyrics to the song ‘Sim­ple Gifts’ hand scrawled on a scrap of paper because a dear, sweet coun­sel­lor over­heard her singing it and encour­aged her to share it with the group (sniff).

The camp is behav­ing like cell phone com­pa­nies who have con­tracts that pro­tect their inter­ests with lit­tle thought for what would serve their cus­tomers best.

On the other hand, some notable com­pa­nies have incred­i­bly sim­ple exit plans that make it vir­tu­ally seam­less for you to go else­where. One shin­ing exam­ple is the online billing ser­vice Fresh­books. Fresh­books lives up to its tagline “Pain­less Billing” by allow­ing you to leave, or down­grade your account with no ques­tions asked. No one will ask you why you’re leav­ing or nego­ti­ate to get you to stay. You sim­ply click a a but­ton and off you go.

Another notable exam­ple is the small busi­ness soft­ware com­pany 37 Sig­nals. Their phi­los­o­phy is based on let­ting their cus­tomers out­grow them. In their book Rework, the company’s founders Jason Fried and David Heine­meier Hans­son say that they real­ize they can’t be all things to all peo­ple, and that when some com­pa­nies “grow up” they’ll move on to other soft­ware com­pa­nies. In short “Scar­ing away new cus­tomers is worse than los­ing old customers.”

When you’re will­ing to let cus­tomers exit with­out pain and suf­fer­ing you’re say­ing sev­eral impor­tant things about your brand:

• You are think­ing about your cus­tomers’ needs over your own
• You know who you are and who you aren’t–and that what you’re offer­ing isn’t for everyone
• You aren’t just being puni­tive. Sure there may be costs when some­one goes. And it’s fair to pass those on. But, don’t just do it because you’re angry and want to pun­ish somebody
• You’re con­fi­dent in your own abil­i­ties. You don’t need to force me to love you, I’m going to love you just because you’re so great at doing what you do
• You want me to pass you on. I may not want to use you any­more, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends and I can’t say really nice things about you to other people

So let’s not make this whole breakup thing so painful. There are lots of rea­sons why peo­ple have to move on. Some of them very innocu­ous. So let’s part on happy terms, shall we?

Oh, and can I have my jeans back?

When I go to the bath­room in restau­rants, I often think about the soap. The soap has become a fix­a­tion for me because I always ask myself: did they or didn’t they refill the expensive-brand soap dis­penser with cheap soap?

When I see a Method dis­penser, the series of ques­tions begins:

Do they really use Method soap?

How many peo­ple wash their hands here? That’s expensive.

It’s prob­a­bly not Method. Wait, let me smell it. I don’t think so.

Why don’t they just put the cheaper brand in here?

How do I feel about this fraud?

Why do I care?

Why am I such a vic­tim of branding?

The soap becomes a dis­trac­tion from the din­ing expe­ri­ence and my per­cep­tion of the restau­rant. Truth is, they’d be bet­ter to either use a generic (so as to be invis­i­ble) soap dis­penser, or some­thing totally unique (in order to say some­thing about themselves.)

Herein lies the trou­ble with Jen­nifer Aniston’s celebrity endorse­ment of Smart Water.

Like soap, water is a par­ity prod­uct. What­ever it’s called, it more or less does the job. Draw­ing atten­tion to the whole brand­ing game thus becomes a big-hairy distraction.

No one loathes Jen­nifer Anis­ton more than Canada’s own Lainey​gos​sip​.com. In fact, Lainey’s most recent rant on Anis­ton sums up the prob­lem with her endorse­ment of Smart Water. I

In this month’s issue of Harper’s Baz­zar Anis­ton pays homage to Bar­bara Steisand in a photo shoot. Lainey’s response is swift and harsh, and then she has a moment of self-reflection:

So would Streisand make movies like The Bounty Hunter over and over and over again? Movies that depict women one dimen­sion­ally who can only be ful­filled by a man and love?

You ask me why I’m hard on Jen­nifer Anis­ton. I’m hard on her because the game she sells sounds so good but the game she actu­ally plays is the worst fraud there is. Jen­nifer Anis­ton is not an exam­ple. Jen­nifer Anis­ton is what we shouldn’t. And Jen­nifer Anis­ton is cer­tainly NOT Bar­bra Streisand.

And this my friends is pre­cisely why Smart Water made a big, huge mis­tep in cast­ing Jen­nifer Anis­ton as it’s spokesmodel. Using an actor who “sounds so good…but the game she actu­ally plays is the worst fraud ever” thrusts me back into the mind­set of the soap conundrum.

The fraud of Jen­nifer Anis­ton high­lights the fraud of sell­ing water, of brand­ing, of all that’s good and right with the world.

And the more her abs look like a wash­board, the more dis­tracted I become (how much does she work out? what does her life look like?…) And I’m not alone. As soon as the ad was pub­lished, folks started spec­u­lat­ing about Aniston’s diet. And, oth­ers have used the absur­dity of Aniston’s endorse­ment to high­light more impor­tant issues, such as lack of access to clean water.

So, you can choose to be great or choose be invis­i­ble. If you land some­where in the mid­dle you risk draw­ing atten­tion to the effort–which really defeats the purpose.

What celebrity endorse­ments do you think work? Do they ever work? As Linda Rich­mond would say, talk among yourselves.

We’d like to inter­rupt the noise in your head to inform you that you are not your audience.

The con­cept is sim­ple, and yet very smart peo­ple for­get to remove their heads from their navels (or worse places) to look around and con­sider what their audi­ence might look like.

Being in this busi­ness, I’m often engaged in casual con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple about mar­ket­ing. Sit­ting pond-side on a vaca­tion recently, a tal­ented expressive-arts ther­apy instruc­tor wanted to dis­cuss names for her business.

It was hard to main­tain a pro­fes­sional demeanor when she told me the name she was con­sid­er­ing was Cos­mic Spi­ral. Granted, when you research its mean­ing, Cos­mic Spi­ral is a com­pelling term that has existed in a gazil­lion cul­tures for a gazil­lion years.

But, if you didn’t know that, the name Cos­mic Spi­ral would mean just one thing; “You are a crazy woo-woo fanatic and your busi­ness is way too ‘out there’ for me.”

My first ques­tion to her was, “well, do you want to attract peo­ple just like you?” She is a woman I respect, and I’ve par­tic­i­pated in her pro­grams. But I con­sider myself a pretty main­stream gal. Start talk­ing cos­mic spi­rals and I’m run­ning for the door.

This is an extreme exam­ple of a rather com­mon prob­lem. Peo­ple don’t get out of their own heads to con­sider who their audi­ences may be and what they need to hear and see to feel like they are part of the message.

In Saturday’s The Globe and Mail there was a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle about Ontario Parks’ move to reach out to Ontario’s new­com­ers with cul­tur­ally rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion and work­shops on the joys of camp­ing. A 22% drop in camp­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion lead Ontario Parks to under­take focus groups and, voila, Ontario Parks iden­ti­fies a huge poten­tial audi­ence that has been alien­ated by their cur­rent marketing.

Every year between 2002 and 2007 an aver­age of over 126,000 new­com­ers arrived in Ontario and no one was help­ing them get excited about camp­ing. I find that pretty amaz­ing. But then again not surprising.

On the flip side, two Toronto based busi­nesses have taken a proac­tive approach to audi­ences by think­ing beyond demo­graph­ics (age, gen­der, income, edu­ca­tion), and instead think­ing about com­mu­ni­ties of interest–specifically about peo­ple who use bikes to get around.

Bik­ing as a form of trans­porta­tion is on the rise. What do urban bik­ers look like? A lit­tle gut-work will tell you they are a socially engaged, values-minded, edu­cated bunch who tend to be inde­pen­dent thinkers.

It then makes per­fect sense that two val­ues based independently-minded busi­nesses that wanted to stand out decided to talk to bik­ers. Duf­flet, a high end dessert com­pany, ran Tour De Duf­flet through­out the month of June in cel­e­bra­tion of Bike Month. Par­tic­i­pants who biked to all 3 Duf­flet cafes in one day received a sou­venir water bot­tle, refresh­ments and other goodies.

Type Books has also forged a con­nec­tion between their indie book stores and indie cul­ture inher­ent in bik­ing. Type has part­nered with Bike Sauce, a new DIY bike repair space and com­mu­nity hub. Bike Sauce wanted to offer cyclists a resource library on all things bike related. They approached Type, who did all of the dig­ging to find the most rel­e­vant books, and sold them to Bike Sauce at a discount.

Instead of see­ing your­self as the audi­ence, or think­ing in terms of demo­graph­ics, con­sider what com­mu­ni­ties of inter­est could engage in what your busi­ness has to offer.

• Who besides you, and peo­ple like you, cares about what you’re doing?
• What unique fea­tures do you have that could be impor­tant to oth­ers (quick= moms, escapist=professionals, etc.)
• Where do those peo­ple go for infor­ma­tion? How should you speak to them?
• Who can you part­ner with to cre­ate mean­ing­ful link­ages that don’t already exist?

Most impor­tantly, avoid the cos­mic spi­ral. It may be ancient. It may be beau­ti­ful. But man, it’s a long, strange trip.

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 »