It's Friday. Time to step away from the keyboard.

Not me. You. In my life, my escape, my getaway, my vacation is the keyboard and the words (my notebooks too). Thinking about words. Reading words. Writing words. No stress. No anxiety. It's my own, personal, breath of fresh air. I feel my lungs expand, when I read something about life that I did't know. I feel my lungs contract, when I'm able to put some words to my thoughts, and share them with you. Two places that have been inspiring me for quite some time have been the writing of Alain de Botton (I believe that Julien Smith from Breather turned me on to him, when he dropped off The Pleasures And Sorrows Of Work for me to read one day, many years ago). It's one of those magical books that I often go back to, just to rifle through some pages (apologies, Julien, if you wanted that one back ;). And, The School of Life.

Pushing beyond the words.

In 2008, de Botton along with a few partners open up The School of Life. A real school. One free of politics and religion, where individuals can learn some of the most important skill-sets that they do not teach us in school (sadly). Classes and workshops revolve around themes like improving your relationships, finding more satisfaction in your working life and even a course on how to spend time alone. It's fascinating stuff. The kind of stuff that might have been considered fluffy or new age-y not all that long ago. In today's age, it feels like the most important things that we can teach our children... and ourselves. Did you know about The School of Life? Have you been following Alain de Botton's work?

Three simple things to watch...

1. Digital Sabbath. If you're going to unplug to do these things, I'm all for a Digital Sabbath. If you're going to make a real attempt, don't unplug at all, but simply turn of all of your notifications, and set strict rules for how you manage your technology, instead of the other way around.
2. Alain de Botton on How to Live Wisely in the Digital Age. A wonderful forty-five minute presentation on how to truly live in a connected world, where - for most of us - our jobs now transcend everything about who we are and how we connect to people... always.
3. Calm. Perspective is everything. I'm just as anxious as the next person, while being fully aware that the act of being calm, finding calm and searching out calm needs to play a major role in all of our daily lives.

Now, how do you feel?

Tags: alain de botton anxiety breather calm digital age digital sabbath julien smith the pleasures and sorrows of work the school of life work life balance

Wonder Through Life. Don't Wander Through Life.

What is your purpose?

Too many people wander through life. I prefer to wonder through life. One little letter, it makes all the difference. When I was younger (in my mid-teens), I was absorbed by music magazines. Remember, there was no Internet. What I knew about the music I loved (and for me, that was mostly the heavy kind of music), I learned from the monthly magazines and the odd/random instances when one of my favorite bands' video would be played on TV. Otherwise, that was it. Nothing. No contact. No Twitter feeds. No Instagram. No YouTube. No websites. It was barbaric. Back then, I somehow lucked my way into writing about music for a national teen magazine. That magazine was published monthly. One edition was in English, and one edition was in French (that's how Canada rolls). The French edition was sort of like the English one, but it featured selected cultural artists that were emerging either because they were French or because they were more popular in French Canada. When that magazine went away (the publisher had a life-altering event and decided to change career paths), I had to figure out how to keep writing about music, which I loved so much. I started asking questions.

I went on a quest.

What I didn't know then, that I realize now is that I was starting to ask questions about the music magazine publishing industry. I was curious, and I wanted to do something about it. But, I didn't know what. Without knowing it, it became my quest. More important than a college degree, more important than spending time at the bar, and more important than anything on TV. I began to realize that in Quebec (where the majority of people speak French), there was no rock magazine that wrote about the major, international bands, but written like a fan, in French for this audience. With a lot of help from a business partner and other resources, we launched an ad-supported free music magazine to address this audience. No one else had done this. No one else was doing it. No one else saw this opportunity. It became the reason that I would wake up in the morning, and the reason that I could not sleep at night.

Once you find your purpose, our potential grows.

In my second business book, CTRL ALT Delete, I wrote the entire last half of the book about us - as individuals - and how we have to think differently about the work that we do, and how we go to work. I called that second half: Reboot - You. The road to publishing those music magazines was not linear. The road to uncovering my purpose, and then making it happen was not linear. It was, without a doubt, a very squiggly path. No clear line of sight. It only makes sense, when I look back on it. In reverse. It was like that when we started Twist Image. Not many marketing agencies were thinking about how to use technology and the Internet to make brands better marketers. Not many marketing agencies were actually getting their hands dirty, and doing the work. We were. We wanted to. We found our purpose. Nearly fifteen years later, we keep our eyes open, we keep asking questions, we keep pushing (you can even read about how we're pushing our thinking here, on this blog, on when we have conversations with other business thinkers on our Six Pixels of Separation Podcast). It keeps the team hungry. I'm hungrier than ever. I believe - from the bottom of my heart - that this is still "day one" as Amazon's Jeff Bezos likes to say.

Opening your heart to a new purpose.

I got an note from Saul Colt about a TEDx Talk called, Purpose And The Love-Based Economy by Jelly Helm at TEDxBend. I had never heard of Jelly Helm before, but the recommendation from Saul, and a first name like "Jelly," how could I not check it out? Jelly runs his own creative business called, Studio Jelly in Portland, Oregon where he has helped brands like Starbucks, Nike, Wikipedia and DC Comics find their purpose and how it connects their business to consumers (a man after my own heart). In this short TEDx Talk, talks about purpose in life, why it's important and how you can open your eyes, in order to find yours.

Enjoy this...

Tags: amazon blog business book ctrl alt delete day one dc comics digital marketing agency entrepreneur instagram internet jeff bezos jelly helm marketing marketing agency music magazine music magazine publishing nike podcast publisher publishing purpose reboot you rock magazine saul colt squiggle squiggly path starbucks studio jelly ted ted talk tedx bend twist image twitter wikipedia writing youtube

Advertising Agencies Have Got It All Wrong.

It seems like an easy cop out. In fact, one could argue that it's the most simple thing for a traditional agency to say to a client: "don't worry about the Internet. It's just a channel to communicate a message to an audience, like every other channel."

No, it's not. The Internet is different (sorry).

Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the winding down of a fun dinner. Maybe everyone was just tired and wanted to go home. I don't know. It has happened to me countless occasions. I see this happen on YouTube as well, when I watch debates about what it takes to connect with a consumer in a very different world. To say that marketers are scrambling to get the attention of consumers - in a world where a message can be flicked away with complete ease - would be an understatement. But, just because it's hard to get a message to resonate, it doesn't mean that technology is just another channel.

Validate your thinking by not thinking like a mass media mechanism.

If all you're looking for is attention, then the Internet can be used like every other channel in which advertising is seen. That is true. If all your brand would like to do, is shout a message to consumers (I think Seth Godin, it's easy to get frustrated and retreat to the position that the Internet doesn't solve any marketing issue, other than how a message can be transmitted. Are we really still doing this? A very senior digital marketing executive recently pulled me over and suggested that - in parts of my presentation - I move beyond the, "hey, did you know that this is how big digital has become?" to the stance of , "hey, this is an old story, already. It's done, so this is how you can catch up!" Fair ball. I recently blogged about this: It's Not My Job Anymore. Still, after many conversations at dinner and watching a lot of the discourse online, we arrive at this strange place where everything a brand can do online is simplified into the soul-crushing nothing that it's no different that TV or radio... or whatever channels we used in the past to convey a message to an audience... and the price we had to pay to access that audience was significant.

When an audience changes, the message must change. When the technology changes. We must change.

If you go back (more than a decade), this blog has had one macro message: using traditional advertising in new media is a massive mistake, but more importantly, an opportunity lost. For over a decade, we have discussed, dissected and debated this. Still, this is the ultimate stance that most traditional advertisers take when it comes to digital marketing. With that, some of them have been successful. They've had millions of views on YouTube and managed to get millions of friends on Facebook. This smells like success. Wrong. This smells like advertising success, so let's just call it what it is. When technology allows you to do more (connect, share, engage, sell, interact, create, collaborate, etc...) and all a brand does is benchmark itself against traditional advertising metrics, what is left to be said?

Am I the only one who thinks like this?

It is so easy to lean back in a chair and say that, "in the end, it's just another channel," but being this dismissive of something so transformational and disruptive is the kind of thinking that has led to the current state of vanity metrics (as my good friend and Google's Digital Marketing Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, calls them). The expectation of more (from me, from you or from whomever) is not an idea that should be easily dismissed. If we're all not looking at how to evolve our digital marketing to meet the needs of our company's revenue, then what is the point? Since the early nineties, I have been active in digital marketing. It's not about how long I've been banging a drum (and you have too), it's about how much further we can go. It's about using our advertising prowess as one component of a much more viable opportunity. To just dismiss it and chalk the Internet up to another place where people congregate and consume media feels like a disservice to the marketing industry.

I'm not angry. Just passionate. You?

Tags: advertising advertising agency advertising channel advertising metrics avinash kaushik blog brand communications consumer digital marketing digital marketing evangelist facebook marketer marketing marketing industry mass media new media seth godin technology vanity metrics youtube