Ted Turner:
“Early to bed and early to rise, work like hell and advertise.”
Apple’s Steve Jobs:
“The only thing that works is management by values. Find people who are competent and really bright, but more importantly, people who care exactly about the same things you care about.”
Jimi Hendrix:
“Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.”
If you’re looking for a freelance writer, designer, Web person, or other creative, please, PLEASE do not hire one from Guru.com. Or Elance.com.
I belonged to each of these outfits for a short time and found that the whole concept is designed to suck money out of a creative person’s bank account for the privilege of bidding against fellow creatives for projects and driving the cost of creative work down, down, down to the depths of hell.
Creatives fighting for a bite of client
Keep in mind you’re bidding against people in India, China and some faraway places with strange-sounding names, where a dollar can buy a week’s worth of food. You can find a writer there (or even here, if you’re talking about a jobless teen living in his parents’ basement) who will write 20 500-word blog articles for $15.00.
How much time do you think those writers spend on “research” or “polishing” their prose? Or even “thinking?” Nada, that’s how much. The same is true of some writers for low-paying content mills like DemandStudios.com and Examiner.com*. Recently, I read a supposedly informative article from Examiner.com. I could have pulled better content out of my nose.
At a recent manufacturing conference, one attendee piped up, “I found a marketing manager on Guru.com!” I groaned. “She’s really good, too!” he claimed. I wonder whether an engineer knows what a good marketing manager is. What a miracle if it turned out to be the lowest bidder on Guru.com.
If you are looking for creative help, please don’t get writers around the globe slashing at each others’ throats to snag a cheap job. ‘Cause the only kind of work you’ll get is… cheap. And probably bad. You get what you pay for, and if you pay a decent rate, you’ll usually get decent writing, design, or other creative work. And you may even develop a productive long-term relationship with the creative you hire.
Don’t go global for creative help. Outsourcing is bad, especially when there’s plenty of great talent right here in the good ol’ U.S.A. Be a patriot — Buy American! Thank you!
*Qualification: I have read at least one excellent blog post by an Examiner.com writer I know. Quality at Examiner.com is not always bad, but it is variable.
While doing research for an article on the National Museum of Funeral History (I kid you not!), I found the following rules, word for word, on a sign in the Museum’s reconstruction of a 1900s Casket Factory:
Work Rules
IF YOU WANT TO DO GOOD WORK AND BE A SUCCESS IN LIFE…
1. Be Clean and Orderly.
2. Take Good Care of Property, Equipment and Materials.
3. Follow Instructions Carefully and Continually.
4. Work Well from Whistle to Whistle.
5. Work Well Every Day and Tell you Foremen when You Cannot.
6. Work Well with Others.DO YOU KNOW ANYONE WHO FOLLOWS THESE SIX LAWS WHO DOES NOT GET ALONG WELL IN LIFE?——–
Remembering to follow rule number 6 would help a lot of us. And “Work Well” is a nice, Horatio-Algerish motto to live by.
If you want to see some of the fascinating exhibits in the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, TX, including the actual Popemobile used on the Pope’s U.S. visit in 1983, Civil War embalming, artistic and fantasty caskets from Europe, and much more, go here.
Have you ever done something so dumb, so incredibly off-the-wall, that you have to ask yourself, “What was I thinking?”
The other night, I was driving home from a friend’s house, when I heard a loud bang from (I thought) the back of my car.
“There goes the alignment I just had done,” I thought. And drove on my merry way. I thought I’d run over something, like a chunk of concrete. Oh well.
I drove on for a couple of blocks, noticing the car was pulling harder to the right by the second. Then I heard the sickening “ka-bump, ka-bump” sound of a flat tire.
I pulled into the nearest driveway (Hi, folks!) and got out to take a look. Nothing wrong in the back. But the right passenger-side tire was flatter’n a flitter. And the rim looked scraped and bent, too.
At that moment, I asked myself, “What the heck did I do? What was I thinking? Was I thinking at all? How could I have done something that severe and not really paid attention?”
I do not know what I did to flatten the (brand-new) tire and crunch the rim. All I know is, I had to pay $65 for a new/used wheel and $18 to get a new, Road-Hazard-Protected tire put on.
But I’ve pondered this the last couple of days. How could I (a) not know what I’d done; and (b) not have stopped immediately after that big bang?
I know what I was thinking: nothing, nada, zip. Duh.
Sometimes in life, we are going along on our way, and BANG! something shocking happens. But we go brain-dead. We go on, whistling, unconscious, happy and ignorant. But for me, no more of that.
Just today, I became aware of a big bumping and thumping going on somewhere at the back of my house. Heck, in this neighborhood, someone’s always using some big, noisy machine. I thought, “Oh, it’ll stop in awhile.” It kept on, and having just reminded myself (above) to take note of noises, I got up and looked out the back door. There was a squirrel hanging on a screen on the porch. Jumping from one screen to the other, panicked, unable to remember how he got in. I took a photo of him clinging to the corner. In a minute, he noticed the hole where he’d entered and quickly exited.
If I’d ignored that noise, I would have missed the sight. A once-in-a-lifetime look at a squirrel hanging from a screen. Wow. Note to myself: It pays to stay awake.
The fantasies of 50s sci-fi are coming true! I’m wearing a lead helmet from now on.
Brain thinking of Cheetos. Mmmm.
DUKE (US)—A new generation of marketing experts may be able to test a product’s appeal while it is still being designed using advanced techniques to see the human brain in action.
So-called “neuromarketing” takes the tools of modern brain science, like the functional MRI, and applies them to the somewhat abstract likes and dislikes of customer decision-making.
See every one of them here.
The winner is “Logorama.” Two Michelin man cops chase miscreant Ronald McDonalda through 2,500 different corporate logos. I think I heard it took six years to make this 16-minute film. My question is, “Why bother?” But hey, I’m not in the Academy.
Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can. -Lowell Thomas
He starred in “High Adventure With Lowell Thomas” for many years, traveling around the world to show America what life was like in remote, exotic parts of the globe.
Advertising a laundry list of product features doesn’t tell the prospective customer how the product or service being advertised can fix a problem he or she is having. So smart advertisers always ask, “Where’s the pain?”
Are you underwater on your mortgage? Do you have migraine headaches? Is your dog getting fleas all over your house? These are pains a product or service might solve.
It doesn’t always have to be a major pain. One of the smartest new products I’ve seen is the taco shell with a flat bottom. It lets you stand the taco up on the plate while you add the fillings. And if you put it down to take a drink of water, it won’t fall over and spill meat and lettuce all over the table, chairs and floor.
Where’s the pain? For the mom, it’s having to clean up after her kids on taco night. The flat-bottomed shells eliminate most of the mess. A time-saver, a tension-tamer, a neater way to eat tacos, wow! Why did no one think of this before? Maybe because nobody bothered to ask, “Where’s the pain?” for the consumer (the mom, who usually does the grocery shopping).
Pain relief in taco shell form. Brilliant! So it’s not just advertising that makes the sale; it’s also a smart new product idea. But the bottom line, for manufacturers and creators of advertising, is the same: Where’s the pain? and how can we make it go away? If you can answer those two questions and follow up to create a product or message customers see as some kind of salvation, you’re in business. Otherwise, you’re just a me-too. And nobody wants to be that.
Why should we build our personal brands? So when someone hears our name, they instantly think, “Ah, that’s the person who (does or is something specific).” Like, “Ah, Jane Frogge. She’s the one who helped my friend get a job last fall.” Or, “Ah, John Jantsch, that’s the guy who created Duct Tape Marketing.” Or, “Susan Gorman, she’s the one who pitched in to help with my son’s bake sale for Haiti relief.”
Oscar Wilde said, “The only bad publicity is an obituary.” But short of that, there are plenty of so-so or unfocused (even negative) “reviews” of you out there for people to hear, unless you’re consciously building your personal brand around positive attributes, accomplishments, or emotional values. What value can you be to others? That’s the question your personal branding should answer.
In this article, seven experts share their secrets for building their personal brands. Well worth reading.
On the other hand, I have a love-hate relationship with the word, “branding.” So many people use it to mean “a logo.” But it’s so much more than that. In this article, Josh Kaufman says “branding” is an overrated buzzword. But then he offers several tips as to how to improve your reputation, which is really what it’s all about.
Most advertising agencies are honest and trustworthy. But there are some whose attitude is, “Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules!”
Name that movie for 10 points.
We can do all the same things agencies do, but without charging you for the Italian leather couches and blown-glass chandeliers. And without cheating.
You can hire one freelancer — either a designer or a writer — or a team to get your project done. Call me for writing projects or referrals to professional designers, project managers and media planning freelancers I can recommend.
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