I was thinking about hard work today, in particular the long hours endured by many NYC professionals.  I was never scared of hard work, not when you're raised by a father who's worked the graveyard shift for 15 years running -- heading off to work when normal folks get ready for bed.  Not when you see your father pick up a side job delivering Dominoes pizza, often into neighborhoods so rough that cops offered to accompany him into the projects.  Not when you see your father plow his savings and sweat equity into one new business after another, all in the effort to escape the dead-end cycle of factory labor.

No, hard work never concerned me.

But what I'm obsessed with these days is smart work.  Work that demands not brute effort, but all of your creative capacity.  Work that begs the question "why not?" as often as "why?"  Work where your imagination -- yeah remember that relic from kindergarten? -- is finally dusted off and put to...well, work!

Come to think of it, fixing the systemic problems unearthed over these past several years is probably less about driving towards the right answers, and more about pondering the right questions.

I recently witnessed a couple of incidents which led me to think twice about the substance beneath the headlines.

The first incident occurred as I was walking towards Alphabet City.  Not the best part of town, but, as is typical of many NYC neighborhoods post-Giuliani, urban plight has been tempered by trendy lounges and organic eateries. 

It was close to 7PM and approaching prime meal time in NYC.  But every restaurant I walked by – one after another – were ghost towns.  Empty, all of them.  Here we are, in one of the eating capitals of the world, but the only people you could find were standing or milling about, waiting to serve.

This wasn’t some tucked off corner of Manhattan.  This was 14^th street – a major artery.  These weren’t shlumpy places either – I caught an attractive Turkish joint amongst them.

This block wasn’t dead, though.  There was a small crowd gathering in front of the local pawn shop.  Folks were waiting to enter, but there seemed to be some confusion over its operating hours.  People were asking one another, “is it even open today?”

So.  No money to spend dining out.  Rather, a willingness to trade in valuables in order to pay the bills.  Got it.

The second incident occurred during a game of Taboo.  The phrase was “Baby Boomers” during one round.  My friend, who was “at bat” this round, took a look at his cue card and seemed relieved.  Easy point, perhaps?

He launched into his first clue: “It’s our parents’ generation…”.  He was greeted with silence and puzzled looks, until someone shouted out, “Immigrants!”  Several teammates echoed in agreement.  After a few seconds, my friend, deflated that a seemingly easy round was taking so long, gave more clues before his team finally guessed the answer.

Not so obvious, I guess.

Mind you, most folks in the room were of Asian descent, so “immigrants” was a perfectly understandable response.  But so was “Baby Boomers”.  The problem is that when most folks talk about Baby Boomers, they’re talking about the 77 million Americans born between ’46 and ’64.  Y’know, the monolithic force that cut a hot knife through history – and altered the course of culture and consumerism.

But they’re not of uniform identity.  Over 12% of the U.S. population is foreign born, but most of them are on the younger side.  So let’s assume for Baby Boomers it’s some percentage south of that…let’s say it’s 5%.  At first blush that doesn’t feel monumental.  But that’s nearly 4 million immigrant Baby Boomers who have had a drastically different experience than what the classic archetype suggests.  You contrast my Dad with Bill Clinton and you’d end up with more differences than similarities.  In values, in outlook, in beliefs.  No matter what a smart marketing plan or demographic survey would lead you to believe.

So what have I learned?

We are bombarded by headlines, talking heads, and shoddy programming pretending to be the news.  Our lives are awash in social media, with all the chatter producing what feels like a 24-second news cycle.  But what is happening to people – to everyday human beings?

To get real answers, I think you just have to observe them.  Ask them things.  Cut through the chatter and get to the substance.

I did something today that I rarely do.  I reached out and emailed a brand.  And not just once, but twice.  But the circumstance surrounding each instance couldn't have been more different.

What compels someone to take time out of his busy day and script correspondence to a faceless corporate entity?  It must be candy for a marketer, right?  But is only positive feedback targeted; in other words, it's great if the author expresses affinity or loyalty towards the brand, but what if the opinion is less than favorable?

The first email I wrote was out of sheer annoyance.  I had just spent more than five minutes filling out a Barnes & Noble web survey.  Five minutes is not an insignificant amount of time, especially when we have so many other productive activities to check off during a day.  However, I wouldn't mind if those five minutes were spent immersed in a pleasurable brand-building activity.  Something like Saab's stunning microsite for example.

But stunning this web survey was not.  The first sin was ignorance of the audience.  There was marketing vernacular everywhere that has nothing to do with a B&N customer's worldview (who refers to stores as "channels" in normal conversation?).  The survey was littered with tasks that only marketing geeks could appreciate (yes, normal folks can mentally allocate 100 points amongst their preferences...it's practically an everyday occurrence!). 

The second sin was just plain laziness.  The very first question asked me to make a specific selection.  The choices were amongst 5 pre-populated stock answers; y'know, of the "I Agree / I Sort of Agree / I Disagree" variety.  It felt like a mechanism to set a control for the survey. 

So I clicked it. 

But why?  Why was I being asked to "sterilize" the testing instrument?  Shouldn't I be only asked to focus on my relationship with the B&N shopping experience?  I was left with the impression that B&N couldn't spend 5 minutes of their own time to put their best foot forward with thousands of customers.

So in light of this experience, I whipped off an email to their web support crew, telling them (politely) that I didn't mind filling out surveys, but to never bother me again with a careless, thoughtless product.  Because even though it's not product I'm paying out of pocket for, it's still a representation of your brand that I'm spending precious time to consume.

But enough of that.  My blood is starting to boil again.  What of this other email?

Limbo is a gorgeous videogame that was recently released by an indie studio out of Denmark.  The game is stunning, and the case study I'll be citing for a long time coming, when defending my "videogames as art" position to naysayers.  The problem is that it's only available for digital download (i.e., no hard copy for me to buy at Best Buy), and it's only available to Microsoft XBOX owners.

Trouble is...I don't have an XBOX.  Only have a Wii and a PS3.  Limbo ain't available on either of those platforms. 

So we've got problems.

I whipped off an email to the studio, begging them to release the game on PS3.  I tried to add a touch of self-conscious humor to it, so it wouldn't reek of 13-year old geekboy.  Not too much anyway.  And someone wrote back (one of the software designers, I believe...the studio is so small help email is probably handled ad hoc by whoever's got time to spare) with a courteous response. 

I didn't get the response I wanted but the point was that I needed this product, and was willing to go out of my way to find out how I could get my hands on it.  This was purely based on the strength of the product alone: the edgy design aesthetic that went into the creation of the game, and the thoughtfulness that went into its play mechanics.  The studio is tiny and can't afford a marketing blitz.  This ragtag bunch of dudes (I'm assuming it's a pack of dudes) were focused solely on delivering this knockout product, and fortunately the ecosystem exists (the virtual marketplace created by Microsoft) for their vision to see the light of day.

And here I was, an uber-fan, emailing them out of the blue to see how I could get my money into their hands for the right to experience their product.

Of course this isn't a fair comparison.  B&N is a nearly 100-year old enterprise operating 1,400 retail outlets across the US.  They're a sprawling organization responsible for generating $5 billion of revenue per year.  Things will slip through the cracks, like this lil' ol' web survey I took.  On the other hand, Limbo sprang forth from a couple of fellas' imaginations barely 4 years ago.  From this consumer's perspective, they're starting out with a much cleaner slate.  I'm more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.  But the lesson in all this is that every little bit of interaction counts.  Especially these days, when brands can be experienced in 140 characters, or in aggravating 45 minute wait times when you're on the phone with customer service.  So be mindful of your brand...every little bit of it.  It could determine if you get some serious hate mail or love letters.

This is nuts. My brother put me onto Blakroc, a project between...nah screw it we don't need the details right now.

I don't know jack about fashion, but this is the coolest way of displaying handbags I've ever seen.

(caught @ Barney's on F.N.O.)

 

...and these doting parents are ready to pick up their tots, with umbrellas in tow.

A nice scene from Orchard street -- and a rare bright spot in yet another dreary NY day.

Two straight weekends. Two straight amazing big-budget, widely-distributed movies featuring marquee names. Isn't Oscar season supposed to start in the fall?

 Last weekend was District 9, what some circles were calling the most true-to-form science fiction movie ever. I don't have enough facts to either support or refute that claim, but what I will say is that "D9" was one of the most tightly-produced action flicks that I'd ever seen that, at several junctures, also made you think hard about the human condition. Where Peter Jackson & Co. saved money on household name actors, they plowed into special FX that made you giddy about our (purported) extraterrestrial neighbors the way Men In Black did.

 The Quentin Tarantino-produced Inglourious Basterds was this past weekend. Nowhere near the effects budget that D9 had, but, similar to D9, the mostly international cast made good on their rare opportunity to be associated alongside such stellar names operating behind-the-scenes. The German actor Christoph Waltz, in particular, shone as the meticulous, conniving, yet impeccably polite SS "detective", Col. Hans Landa. The rest of the cast weren't slouches either.

 The two are very different films, but both kept me in a sweaty-palm state of anxiety that I love about movie-watching. Very few wasted moments of screen time, all the more impressive given that both are at least two and a half hours long. Another similarity is that neither one relied on bloated marketing budgets to get the word out. I barely heard much about D9 beyond the deliberately-vague street posters. Yeah there was supposedly a clever viral campaign, but I must not be spending enough time on their target web sites, which is curious, given that I reek of "target audience". And I hadn't even heard of Inglourious Basterds until a few weeks ago!

 Come to think of it, I saw UP the weekend before last. So I guess that makes it 3 for 3!

The recently renovated Noguchi museum, located in Long Island City,
deserves a at least a half-day's walkthrough. His work is all the more
impressive after watching the video on his life journey.

Ladies & Gents of the jury, I submit to you today two separate cases of socially-conscious marketing that's caught my eye as of late. Not saying that one's necessarily better than the other or anything...well, actually I guess I am.
 
The first is another extension of the wildly successful RED campaign, this time featuring organic coffee from Starbucks. The black-and-red hued packaging is certainly eye-grabbing, especially contrasted against the usual earth tones one would find at Starbucks. However, I was surprised at the lack of overall emotional resonance. No pictures of proud, local farmers or snapshots of crops, triumphant against the odds amongst harsh African landscapes. Also, no indication of impact. Sure, the display mentions 4M daily doses of medicine, but what does that boil down to in the grand scheme of things? Does my individual purchase help a family for a year...or a day? With consumer spend as rickety as it is, folks want to know what they're getting for their dollars, even if it's not direction coming back to them.
 
It was almost as if the display was designed during the bull market which no one bothered to update. "Yeah, let's slap the RED logo and the word 'Africa' on a bag of Starbucks coffee...should be a no-brainer!" Sure, today's shoppers want their consumption decisions to reflect their values and worldview, and I don't know if Starbucks made enough of an effort to tap into that opportunity.
 
Then there was the public awareness ad I saw in my subway station, urging NY'ers to turn up (presumably) their AC units to 78 degrees, saving a few bucks in the process. I like the ad because it's practical and efficient: the emphasis is on the (quantifiable) savings that will flow back into the consumer's pockets because of discrete actions he or she can take. Yes, we all know by now that it's "green" to be aware of our energy consumption, and hence there is no mention of the environment (with the exception of the GreenNYC logo). And it couldn't be clearer what we need to do about it: set your AC to 78 degrees, because it's comfortable enough goddammit, and you don't need to be living in an ice cube! The tone is one of common sense -- no preachiness here. (Props to Best Buy for throwing their hat into this one as well)
 
And how did I personally react to these two examples? Didn't walk out with any coffee from S-Bux (prefer iced Tazo teas on balmy days) and cranked my AC up...but only to 75 degrees.

....while another begins. Moved out of the UWS apartment last week, really signifying the closure of my MBA career.

 Packed my jeep so full of my junk, it reminded me of moving on after college.