A well-timed Twitter post got Dulé Hill to send me one in return. You know that's right.
The other day I had an idea. A goal, really, albeit a small one. I had found that there were a couple of celebrities on my Twitter feed that seemed to be very interactive with their followers, and I thought, "I should get one of them to interact with me!" Now, I don't want you to take me for one of those celeb-stalker sorts...I follow one actor, one athlete, one novelist, and a handful of journalists.
The two celebs I follow that I deemed "interactive" couldn't be more dissimilar, but, strangely, both are in Vancouver. William Gibson, father of cyberpunk and author of some truly awesome books; and Dulé Hill, best known for his role as Charlie Young on The West Wing and Burton "Gus" Guster on USA's Psych, both of which are excellent television series.
Gibson, for his part, seems to like to tweet about current events, largely retweeting funny and interesting things he sees, but he responds when people ask him questions. Hill tends to converse with the crowd constantly, and posts about friends, especially West Wing and Psych castmates.
After a failed attempt to get Gibson to respond, I decided to focus on Hill. Now, when I say "focus", I mean, in the immortal words of Mr. Hill's castmate James Roday, "Wait for iiiiiiit!" And the moment arrived.
I saw that Rob Lowe, formerly of The West Wing was trending at the time, due to his appearance on Oprah. Hill had tweeted a number of times regarding his admiration for Lowe, so my tweet was simple, "@dulehill Rob Lowe is trending right now. Just thought you should know." Hill's response? "@benchatt Nice!" That was it. Mission accomplished.
Of course, I told everyone on Facebook what just happened on Twitter. Yes, that sentence is as strange to me as it is to you. The funny thing is that my one-word brush with greatness has stayed on the web—I think I've mentioned it once in real life, to my wife, who then probably saw it on Facebook anyway.
Social media may bring us into closer contact with celebrities these days, but those brushes with fame aren't nearly as cool as running into Ralph Macchio at Taco Bell.
Showing posts with label william gibson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label william gibson. Show all posts
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Intentionalism, Limbic Advertising, and the New Workplace
This post includes: four (4) book recommendations, including one I haven't even read yet, two (2) embedded videos, and three (3) interrelated topics. Set aside something like half an hour if you want to absorb all of this content at once.
I'm not even sure where to start, so I guess I'm going to start with: why. Simon Sinek, last year at a TED conference, gave the following talk, entitled "How great leaders inspire action". You can watch it now, or just read my discussion of it below the embed.
His big premise is this, which he repeats several times: People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. The major scientific underpinning of this idea is that people make decisions in their limbic brain, which is not in any way responsible for the production of language. The emotional core is best accessed by appealing to that emotion, by explaining why you are doing what you're doing and selling to your kindred spirits.
For a more in-depth exploration of this idea, go read William Gibson's Bigend novels: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. I recently described these books as, "like sci-fi, only take out the hyperdrive and put in viral marketing." There's really no other way I can put it. From Pattern Recognition, mischievous bazillionaire genius Hubertus Bigend, on "knowing something in your heart":
You “know” in your limbic brain. The seat of instinct. The mammalian brain. Deeper, wider, beyond logic. That is where advertising works, not in the upstart cortex. What we think of as ‘mind’ is only a sort of jumped-up gland, piggybacking on the reptilian brainstem and the older, mammalian mind, but our culture tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness. The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda. And makes us buy things.
Back to Sinek, whose conclusion is that to have thriving organization, we must have a purpose, and make that purpose the primary talking point. We can't just produce something that no one else produces, we must be something that no one else is.
Which brings me to Rework. The short text by the founders of 37signals, creators of web-based business efficiency software, turns the traditional model of American business on its head, proclaiming that the customer is not always necessarily right, meetings are a necessary evil at best (just plain old evil at worst), demanding work ASAP is poisonous, and working long hours is actually detrimental to one's output. The phrase "highly recommended" does not cover even a small part of how I feel about this book. I have a copy. I'll mail it to you, if you promise to return it. Jason Fried, one of the authors, about meetings: (link here but click around the site and listen to more of his stuff).
The 37signals crew is buying into intentionalism wholeheartedly, preaching that you don't sell things that you believe in, that you do things you believe in, and then you can sell what results from that. With a big enough world, with varied enough tastes, there's probably a market for whatever you are obsessed with.
Which brings me to this blog. I'm pretty obsessed with new ideas, and the way the world is changing. I believe in making the best new ideas accessible to people who wouldn't normally come in contact with them. I can't do it alone, really, especially with the micro-audience this blog has. Um, who wants to write with me? Seriously, email or comments section.
I'm not even sure where to start, so I guess I'm going to start with: why. Simon Sinek, last year at a TED conference, gave the following talk, entitled "How great leaders inspire action". You can watch it now, or just read my discussion of it below the embed.
His big premise is this, which he repeats several times: People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. The major scientific underpinning of this idea is that people make decisions in their limbic brain, which is not in any way responsible for the production of language. The emotional core is best accessed by appealing to that emotion, by explaining why you are doing what you're doing and selling to your kindred spirits.
For a more in-depth exploration of this idea, go read William Gibson's Bigend novels: Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. I recently described these books as, "like sci-fi, only take out the hyperdrive and put in viral marketing." There's really no other way I can put it. From Pattern Recognition, mischievous bazillionaire genius Hubertus Bigend, on "knowing something in your heart":
You “know” in your limbic brain. The seat of instinct. The mammalian brain. Deeper, wider, beyond logic. That is where advertising works, not in the upstart cortex. What we think of as ‘mind’ is only a sort of jumped-up gland, piggybacking on the reptilian brainstem and the older, mammalian mind, but our culture tricks us into recognizing it as all of consciousness. The mammalian spreads continent-wide beneath it, mute and muscular, attending its ancient agenda. And makes us buy things.
Back to Sinek, whose conclusion is that to have thriving organization, we must have a purpose, and make that purpose the primary talking point. We can't just produce something that no one else produces, we must be something that no one else is.
Which brings me to Rework. The short text by the founders of 37signals, creators of web-based business efficiency software, turns the traditional model of American business on its head, proclaiming that the customer is not always necessarily right, meetings are a necessary evil at best (just plain old evil at worst), demanding work ASAP is poisonous, and working long hours is actually detrimental to one's output. The phrase "highly recommended" does not cover even a small part of how I feel about this book. I have a copy. I'll mail it to you, if you promise to return it. Jason Fried, one of the authors, about meetings: (link here but click around the site and listen to more of his stuff).
The 37signals crew is buying into intentionalism wholeheartedly, preaching that you don't sell things that you believe in, that you do things you believe in, and then you can sell what results from that. With a big enough world, with varied enough tastes, there's probably a market for whatever you are obsessed with.
Which brings me to this blog. I'm pretty obsessed with new ideas, and the way the world is changing. I believe in making the best new ideas accessible to people who wouldn't normally come in contact with them. I can't do it alone, really, especially with the micro-audience this blog has. Um, who wants to write with me? Seriously, email or comments section.
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