It takes a village to create bad ideas: the perils of corporate crowdsourcing

"How about a campfire outing for our snowman client?"

“There are no bad ideas.” It’s the familiar refrain by moderators of creative brainstorming sessions everywhere.

And it’s utter baloney. There are, indeed, bad ideas. You know it and I know it. Very bad, truly stupid ideas, as these costly, meandering fusterclucks prove when one or more well-meaning souls, invited for no better reason than the spirit of inclusion, comes up with a beaut that isn’t worth the marker ink used to commit it to a whiteboard.

“How about a national TV ad campaign?” someone will offer, though the product is a specialized B2B service with a total target universe of a few thousand people.

“How about a blimp at the event?” someone will pipe up, though the meager budget allows for nothing more than a few helium balloons.

“How about ‘Got Chlamydia?’” ess. em. aitch.

The Jan. 15  Sunday New York Times ran an outstanding opinion piece titled “The Rise of the New Groupthink,” in which author Susan Cain laments corporate crowdsourcing, and cites recent psychological studies finding that collaboration is not necessarily conducive to creativity.

“Solitude is out of fashion, collaboration is in; most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all,” says Cain. “But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption.”

Especially when it’s the right people who are sequestered. In my years doing this independent creative thingy that I do, it’s been my experience that the very best ideas come not from a conference room full of billable employees of varying ilks and skills, but rather from a very small team of cherry-picked creative thinkers (or an even smaller team of one).

Look, everyone has special talents. Why not let the people whose primary talent is creativity do the creative lifting. The results are way better, way quicker, and you don’t have to spring for a platter of sandwich wraps.

What are your thoughts? I’d like to know.

Let’s talk turkey… On second thought, let’s not.

Readers enjoy a good pun. And copywriters enjoy using them, sometimes to a fault (he said, looking down sheepishly).

Now, successful punnery requires a critical attribute: The word or phrase must have both a literal and a non-literal meaning, both of which must be relevant and instantly recognizable to the reader. For example, a news headline that describes the latest U.S. Navy budget as being in “ship shape” works nicely, because both sides of the pun are readily evident — the literal (ship/Navy) and the non-literal (the non-maritime usage meaning “organized and presentable.”)

But what happens when a pun loses its non-literal usage — that is, when a phrase is no longer part of everyday lexicon? What if, for example, nobody ever used the term “ship shape” anymore? That phrase would then be reduced to its literal meaning. Losing its dual edge, it would no longer be a pun.

Which brings me, albeit in rather circuitous fashion, to “talking turkey.” Once upon a time, the non-literal meaning of this phrase — i.e. forthright, honest discourse — was a part of everyday language. But over the years, this usage has diminished, and these days, nobody ever utters the phrase when they’re not talking about turkeys. As a result, “talking turkey” long ago lost its punworthiness.

And yet, this time every year, writers trot it out for Thanksgiving feature stories. And every year, on the fourth Friday of November, it goes back into cold storage, not to be seen or heard for another twelve months.

There are other pun opportunities for Thanksgiving-related communications. “Gobble,” for example, is an everyday word and used year-round. So is “stuffed.” And “fowl.” But “talking turkey”? Its days are done. So let’s quit using it. Cold turkey.

Happy Thanksgiving, folks.

Was it something I said?

Rejoice, busy friends, rejoice! You need no longer be burdened by the tiresome inefficiencies of common courtesy!

Thanks to the disconnectedness of email and text communications, you can shut down any discussion, at any time, without so much as an “oops, gotta run” or “bbl.” Just—get this—stop conversing. Sure, it may seem like the online equivalent of hanging up the phone on someone. But apparently because it’s email/text, it’s perfectly acceptable!

What’s that, you say? You’ve been on the receiving end of one of these drop-offs? Perhaps you wondered if it was something you said, and scoured the previous exchange for hints of offensiveness. Nope, all clear. You smelled your armpits. Nope, lilacs. You worried if your friend succumbed suddenly to cardiac arrest. Nope, no worries. You’ve merely fallen prey to the PAOH (Perfectly Acceptable Online Hang-up).

So, friends, consider yourself unshackled from centuries of polite conversation protocol, in which one of the small prices of living in a civilized society is the occasional need to gracefully deflect a discussion topic. (“Oh, gee, we’d love to, but we have plans that night.”)

Eeeewwww! Expending 2 or 3 seconds of effort in the interest of good manners? Can you even believe people used to do that? Soooo last decade. It’s much more expedient, and so much less uncomfortable, to simply end the discussion by not responding to the last post. You know, just leave the other person waiting for a reply…and waiting…and waiting.

LinkedIn, Only Linkier: Making Your Profile Work Harder For You

Is your LinkedIn profile working for you, with you? Or is it just lying there, closing its eyes and thinking of England?

Many of my colleagues have espoused the virtues of LinkedIn and its ability to create business leads. Others, however, have expressed dismay that their profile seems to be not much more than an online version of their résumé.

So what’s the difference? Why does LinkedIn work so effectively for some and not for others?

Jeff Haden has a theory. In a very good blog post entitled “How to Create a LinkedIn Profile That Really Connects” (killer headline there, Jeff), Haden relays 6 steps for transforming your LinkedIn summary into a business-building tool. They are:

1. Think of your summary as an elevator pitch.

2. Think first person.

3. Write it yourself.

4. Think keywords.

5. Stick to two to three paragraphs.

6. Keep revising and updating it.

Now, just to be clear, Haden’s post is by no means comprehensive. But his six tips are a decent starting point for anyone looking to optimize the $24.95 monthly investment.

Have a look at the post; it’s good stuff. Oh, and don’t forget to review the Reader Comments below his post. They contain some additional tips and links from recruiters.

Speaking of which: Do you have your own advice for turbocharging a LinkedIn profile page? Dish, peoples, dish! Your comments are welcome.

Dirty Little B2B Ad Secrets

Quick: What's your headline?

Pssst. Come here. Yes, you. Come here. Closer. Draw the shades, lock the door, and listen to this. Ready? Here goes:

Most business-to-business advertising sucks. 

How can you tell when you’re creating (or reviewing) one of the many, many bad B2B ads out there? The answer can fill multiple blog posts. But here’s one tell-tale sign: the space-wasting redundancy of taking the two most important elements of the ad — visual and headline — and having them repeat each other.

Let’s say your visual is a CFO bound and gagged. Your headline should NOT be “Are you being held hostage?” The visual already says that, so why in the world would you waste precious ad space by parroting it? The headline, instead, should complement the visual in more clever — or at least less lazy — fashion.

You just paid thousands to run this ad in the Wall Street Journal. And you want to say the same thing twice?

An example: Take a look at the teaser ad to the left. The street sign visual screams “Cloud meets big data,” right? Then, inexplicably, the headline re-screams the same darned thing. Wasted space, wasted media dollars, and a wasted opportunity to use the headline to advance the story that the visual began.

The headline could have been a provocative call to action (“Watch what happens to your business when the Cloud meets big data.”) Or, wouldn’t it be cool if the teaser ad’s headline actually, you know, teased (“Las Vegas, May 9, emcworld.com”). At the very least, add something of value by putting the company name in the headline (“EMC2 is proud to bring big data to the Cloud”).

Peoples, virtually all advertising begins with a creative concept, which often includes an image and a copy line to go along with it. Those two elements should complete each other, not repeat each other.

What do you think of this? I’d like to know.

Hey. Me? I’m off of the Cloud.

The remote Cloud servers that store your data are super-reliable...until they're not.

Look, I’ll give you this: Cloud computing definitely has its advantages. An individual or company that moves data and/or software applications to the Cloud doesn’t have to fork out massive dollars for IT; you simply rent space and functionality from another company’s (Google’s, Amazon’s, Microsoft’s, et al) hardware and software. It can be an immense cost-saver, which is why the Cloud is enjoying such buzzwordy success of late.

But as a card-carrying cynic, I tend to look askance at the whole remote computing business and ask “What if the Cloud bursts?” What happens when the servers crash? (It’s been known to happen.) Or are hacked? (A Google search of “server hacked” turns up 125 million results.) And of course, it’s only a matter of time before a power outage — naturally occurring or otherwise — disrupts wide swaths of Internet access.

In any of these cases, what if you need your data and applications (which is pretty much, like, always)? Sorry, they’re stuck up there in the stratosphere, while you’re caught in a cloudburst without an umbrella. That titanium thingy on your desk with the monitor and the keyboard? It’s now a doorstop. And you, my friend, are officially out of business. Yay, Cloud.

Talk all you want about failover options and redundancies. But I’m still very skeptical about moving my business to the ether. I have no issue with backing up my data and apps on the Cloud. But the originals stay on my premises, on my own hardware, thank you very much.

If you want to rely on remote computing for its cost advantages, go for it. But hey. Me? I’m off of the Cloud.

What are your thoughts? I’d like to know.

(c) 2011 Fatt Lipp. All rights reserved.

You’re Only As Old As Your Résumé

If you've seen this guy's name in a voting booth, it's time to youngify your résumé.

You’re as old as you feel, right? Wellll, not if you’re of a certain age and job hunting these days. Feelings, unfortunately, have a lot less to do with your employability than the number of birthdays you’ve celebrated.

In this economy, you’re as old as your résumé makes you look. And if you first entered the job market, say, when Reagan was in the Oval Office, you’d best be careful about what you choose to include in the latter part of your document.

Any pre-1990 job experience, for example, immediately brands you as a 40-something — or worse, depending on how deeply into the ’80s the “Career” section of your résumé plumbs. Sure, experience counts bloddy bloddy blah, and some employers with a senior-level opening might have no issue with hiring an individual with 25+ years’ experience (read: pushing the Big 5-0).

But all other things being equal, how much of a distinction is there, really, between 25 and 20 years of experience — especially if the latter commands a lesser salary? For that matter, what’s the diff between 20 and 15 years, given that the warranted-or-not perception out there is that unlined faces and ungrayed temples are on the good side of the in-prime curve, more adept at social and new media, and so on.

Okay, before the seasoned job-seekers among you go running for the razor blade and warm bath, here’s good news: With a little tweaking, you can make your CV-asaurus more contemporary and relevant. In fact, it turns out that cnnmoney.com recently posted a very good piece about how to update a dusty résumé — starting with 11 quick and easy tips on youngifying your document’s content, style and format. You can check out that article here.

Happy hunting.

SEO copywriting: Stupid human tricks

Ah, so you wanna be an SEO copywriter, do you? Tell me if this SEO copywriting drill sounds vaguely familiar: Jam as many keywords into as little space as possible, and essentially try to trick search engines into elevating your content to the top of their ranks.

Sorry, folks. That’s a fool’s errand, for two reasons:

The first is that Google is waaaay too smart to be hoodwinked by the wicked web-weaving of our tiny human brains. (You think Watson pwn’d the Jeopardy champs? Imagine what several server farms’ worth of computing power can do to our pathetic attempts at keyword stuffing.) Nope. When keyword frequency and density reach a certain threshold, Google catches it instantly, sneers mockingly “Heh, stupid human,” and tosses the content overboard.

The second reason keyword stuffing doesn’t work is that it makes for bad copy — I mean, truly bad copy that people don’t want to read. And make no mistake, folks: When you’re writing for the web, you’re writing for real-live, breathing people. Given the massive amount of content out there on the Internets, your message had darned well better be engaging and interesting to read, or else you’ll be thrown overboard again — this time by a peeved human wielding a Back button.

Re that second point, fancy this: It turns out that the best SEO copywriters are actually the best copywriters, period. That is, writers who have both the knack for honing in on the wants, needs and hot buttons of the target audience, and the talent for crafting compelling prose that appeals to that audience. Only when that goal — writing solid copy — is achieved do these writers go back over the draft and begin the task of optimizing it for search engines.

It’s a key distinction, and the first rule of successful SEO copywriting: First create great copy. Then optimize that copy for search engines.

Is there more to it than that? Of course there is. But that’s for another post.

Autocorrect FAIL: Sorry About Your Feces

D’oh! That was supposed to read “Sorry about your fever.” Thank you, autocorrect.

These days, it seems that everyone with a smart phone has been bitten by its email autocorrect monster. Even little Hannah, who received this alarming message from her father: “We’re going to divorce next month.” Oops, dry those tears, little girl. It was supposed to read “Disney.”

My latest foray into autocorrectitude: When my esteemed client’s name was changed  from Tina to Tuna. Now there’s a pretty good way to scuttle a business relationship, yes?

“Autoincorrect,” as the phenomenon has been labeled, has become so prevalent that noted tech columnist David Pogue has taken to blogging autocorrect follies from reader submissions. And, as was inevitable, a website called Damn You Auto Correct chronicles smart phone exchanges in which adorable babies become affordable ones, hotel vacancies become vasectomies, and a lanai with a view becomes a labia with a view.

Oh sure, you could turn off your autocorrect feature. But then the same fat-fingeredness that triggers the function will instead yield a profusion of typos. (I’m a notoriously inaccurate typist, so without autocorrect, I can easily take several minutes to fire off even a brief message.)

So, the answer to all this? Keep hoping that the Microsofts and Googles of the world keep refining their language processing algorithms. In the meantime, we’re all reduced to texting transsexuals.

Translators! Translators! Texting translators!

© 2011 Fatt Lipp. All rights reserved.

You’re Welcome, Mark Zuckerberg

I can envision how it all went down. Last month, Facebook honcho Andrew Bosworth had a big New York Times interview coming up — a golden opportunity to promote his company’s revamped messaging service. He consulted with Mark Zuckerberg, who advised Bosworth that he needed a hook, an eye-opening sound bite, to jar the reader. So Bosworth began frantically searching the web.

And he came across this Fatt Lipp post from last September — and this passage, in particular:

“The medium is no longer the message. The medium is merely the delivery vessel for your message. Do you know what the message is? The message is the message.”

“Eureka!” shouted Bosworth. He showed the post to Zuckerberg, who grinned broadly and said, “You’ve got it, dude.” So Bosworth jotted down his version of the above, and verbalized it as follows in this December 20 front-page NYT article:

“The future of messaging is more real time, more conversational and more casual. The medium isn’t the message. The message is the message.”

I really do have to start copyrighting my Fatt Lipp thoughts. I really, really do. In the meantime, though, I have this message for Bosworth and Zuckerberg: You’re welcome.