Bad Product, Bad Placement

Remember the re-designed packaging for OXO bouillon cubes? No? Well I do. I thought they were brilliant. When they were placed side-by-side on the grocery shelf, they completely owned the aisle. The OXO’s completed each other and created a string of OXOXOXOXOXOXO for the length of the display, each letter behind a bold, solid colour representing it’s flavour.

Great package design must take multiples into account. How will these products look beside each other? On top of each other? Stacked, mixed, mingled, scattered?

I laughed out loud when I saw this book display at my local big box store. I was looking to buy myself a video game, a DVD, a book— anything new and personal (and cheap) for my birthday. I instantly groped around in my coat for the digital camera. Then I remembered almost getting my membership revoked for pulling out a PEN a few years back in the same store. They thought I was a cold-war box-store price-spy, as opposed to a guy who likes to write down his thoughts and ideas from time to time. Not wanting to create a scene, I deftly prepped the camera, one-handed, in my pocket. Then without any to-do, I matter-of-factly brought the camera to my eye as if scratching my brow. Click. No flash, no attention. And to prevent further litigation, I have respectfully disguised the book prices in the photo (which were far, far below the SRP).

When I was in high school I created a collage project called, “What Famous People Look Like When They Go Home and Take Their Noses Off.” This Tom Cruise picture would feel right at home in my old sketch book. Seeing any celebrity without a nose makes them look cartoonish and absurd. Perhaps that was the intent of this display, but somehow I doubt it. Unauthorized biography or not, this tabloid-pablum fodder makes pseudo-religious-cult-leader-crazed-heartthrob actor Tom Cruise look like an alien bug. And that’s funny.

Post Script: I didn’t buy this book. I bought The Little Book That Makes You Rich and Stock Investing for Canadians for Dummies.

New LifeFocus System Post at JasonTheodor.com

I just posted an explanation of how I’m going to use the new LifeFocus System 6.3b cards this year. Read about it on my personal blog at JasonTheodor.com.

New Links and Big Changes for 2008

I’ve been doing some blog juggling recently. I am slowly moving everything off of the WordPress.com platform and onto my own server. I am still using WordPress software, but I am free to tinker with extras and plugins, and design if I wish.

I have also decided to separate some of the things that I do, instead of aggregate. JasonTheodor.com will be my place for online rambling, thoughts, experiments, announcements, and information about me.

The work on my book, my workshops, lectures, and the like will eventually be moved to ThereIsNoBox.ca.

The LifeFocus™ System will come to life on it’s own website sometime in the new year.

1percent.wordpress.com, my communal link blog, has been moved to 1over100.com (1/100).

Just thought you should know.

My LifeFocus System for Year of the Rat

In a few days, it will be the Year of the Rat, and the Chinese New Year will commence. I am now prepared to meet this year with great productivity and the getting of things done. The LifeFocus System will be tested and documented fully this year. I have teamed up with 2 industry experts to dissect this system and bring it to life in different ways, so expect more from the new LFS in 2008. (LFS will be the new fancy acronym for Life Focus System. I have dropped the ‘mundane’ and dropped the ‘card’ as they were too negative and too restrictive respectively.)

Here is a sneak peek at the routines I will master.

The first 3 of my Routinizations are about health. The next 2 life goals. The last 5 are related to the work I want to get done for myself. Some of it is business, some of it is pleasure, some of it is mixed. I will be carrying this list in my wallet every day as a reminder of what is important to me, and charting my progress. The simple act of checking a box can be enough of a catalyst, enough of a commitment, to effectively re-program my daily actions. If I remind myself long enough, and affirm my actions, I should have a positive healthy new routine established for 2008 in about 3 or 4 weeks. As always, I’ll keep you posted.

MacBook and Clutter

Operating Instructionz

I loathe Bratz dolls. Especially the Bratz Babyz, with their bikini-brief diapers, fetal hydrocephalic heads and 2-Much™ make-up. I was appalled that my daughter asked for them by name for Christmas. They were on every list she made and even whispered to Santa at the mall, so my wife bought 2 of them despite my protestations. Their only saving grace is that they have chunky baby legs and they come with the most amazing Operating Instructions I have ever seen:

* Pull on the ponytails to detach them.
* Snap them back on by putting the pegs in the holes.

Not too complicated when you think about it. Still, what made me laugh out loud was this notice:

Please keep this manual. It contains important information.

That was it. That was ALL the information. A diagram of a big head, 2 arrows, and 2 ponytails, accompanied by 2 obscenely obvious messages. Perhaps this is important to know if I have REAL babyz™ kicking around that might chew/suck/knaw on the ponytails and get them jammed into their tiny esophagi, but do I have to keep the manual? And calling it a manual is also pretty funny considering it’s half a sheet of paper at most.

My best guess is that this protects MGA Entertainment (the makers of Bratz™) from any lawsuits. Little Susie chokes to death on a Bratz Babyz ponytail, but on cross-examination it is discovered that the neglectful father threw the Operating Instructions, which contained important information, in the trash. He was told to keep it. He had been warned. A witness claimed he was snickering as he pitched it in the bin. It’s another win for the Bratz Lawyerz™.

Happy New Year… Soon

I’m going to cheat this year. That’s not a resolution, that’s a fact. Today is January 1st, 2008, and I usually start my annual attempt at another LifeFocus Card based Routinization cycle. Typically I last until my birthday, which is about 50 days. This year I’m going to aim quite a bit farther and try get enough momentum to last a full trip around the sun.

But not quite yet. I got my computer back on December 31st, 2007. It is now a tabula rasa, which means it will take me a few days to install software, tweak configurations, copy files over, and then update the system. I will also be using some serious back-up software this year!At any rate, this will take some time. So I’m cheating. I’m not going to start my New Year until February 7th: the Chinese New Year. Two-thousand and eight is the Year of the Rat, which is also my birth animal, so it is supposed to be “my year”, or at least have special significance to me.This is my Reboot, my Year of Living Creatively.

The Pheonix and the Underwear: How I Spent (and then Lost) November and December

A lot has happened since October. I went to Florida for a few weeks, and lived in a condo on the Gulf Coast. I went to Disneyworld (with the kids) for the first time and my cynicism towards Disney has abated somewhat. I saw the Space Shuttle Discovery launch from about 15 miles away. I got to brainstorm with clients at the top of the 4-Seasons hotel in downtown Chicago. I flew to Winnipeg via Air Canada on the day their computer systems were down and had to wait in line almost 2 hours to run to the plane to then sit and wait for it to be de-iced. Oh, and they lost all my luggage so I had to buy socks and underwear at the Giant Tiger. My suitcases then arrived 5 hours later.

I gave a lecture at FITC Road Show Winnipeg on finding inspiration online called 1% – Because 99% of the Internet is S**t. I got to meet and hang out with R Blank, Josh Davis, Erik Natzke, Hoss Gifford, Robert L. Peters, Branden Hall, Derrick Ypenburg, Tim Scollick, and many others at the Kings Head Pub. I spent a few days with House of Doc before their western tour, and showed them how to use Twitter. Because of this I knew when their van broke down, and when they got caught in a blizzard. I accepted a 6 week full-time contract with idea|couture while at the same time prepared for a marathon 8 hour workshop on Exponential Brainstorming at the Rich Media Centre in Toronto. The workshop is finished, I’m wrapping up my contract, I’m finalizing invoices for the year, writing Christmas lists, and shoveling out of the biggest dump of Toronto lake-effect snow in years. Phew.

Oh, and then my 5 month old MacBook computer hard drive committed suicide by crashing the read/write arm into the magnetic platters all night long until every single shred of data was destroyed. I had planned on using Time Machine (Mac backup software) last week to back up all the work I’ve done, but I was a day too late. I shipped my crippled machine to California (during the busiest mailing season) to an Apple approved data recovery centre called DriveSavers. They reconstructed my hard drive in a clean room, but told me that the ‘click of death’ I had heard when I first noticed something was wrong had actually managed to mangle all data. All of it.

I felt like my house had burnt down.

But it was entirely my fault and entirely preventable. There was really nothing to do but accept it and move on. I just have a lot of work to do coming into the new year. I have to reconstruct everything I spent the last 2 months trying to build. But I know it will be better in the long run. And I’ll appreciate it more this time. And I’ll be copying it onto other drives this time (in triplicate).

I miss the pictures I lost the most… all the images of my kids having fun… but they’re in my memory as well. I just can’t print them or share them the same way. As luck would have it, my LAST ACT was emailing my 16 favourite kids images to Dayna to print, so I actually managed to keep 0.5% of these memories alive.

Now I’m just waiting for a new drive and using Dayna’s laptop for a week or so. It’s much like wearing someone else’s underwear: it’s great not being naked, but it still feels very uncomfortable.

AT&T Lets Their Brand Burn

Many companies have call centres that are incapable of improvisation. They have absolutely no leeway for sympathy or compassion. No flexible imagination. The short term view is that caring costs money. If they keep the calls short, force everyone to pay what is due without exceptions, there will be a better bottom line.

At the moment AT&T has a few negative branding issues. It is embroiled in a class-action lawsuit for participating in illegal wiretapping with the NSA. They are accused of censoring politically sensitive broadcasts, like the ‘mistake’ made during a Pearl Jam concert when the sound was cut as Eddie Vedder sang, “George Bush, leave this world alone.” Even their own privacy policy (according to the San Francisco Chronicle) states, “AT&T — not customers [emphasis added] — owns customers’ confidential info and can use it ‘to protect its legitimate business interests…” The only shine on the ‘Deathstar’ (as it is sometimes referred to) is that they are the exclusive carrier of the iPhone in the United States. And look how eager programmers are to make sure each update to the iPhone is cracked and open as soon as possible to bypass the need for AT&T’s services. (see Wikipedia article for more context)

Now witness AT&T’s treatment of Matt and Danelle Azola, a couple from Ramona San Diego who return from their honeymoon to see their California house burn down in the 2007 wildfires. They call AT&T to cancel their services (since they don’t have a house, never mind a television, computer, or phone), and are asked if they managed to rescue the satellite receiver. When Danelle tells them it was destroyed in the fire with all her other worldly possessions, AT&T informs her she will be sent a $300 bill for its replacement. She pleads to a supervisor, but there was no leniency and AT&T policy is strictly enforced. The mail carrier will just have to place that AT&T bill on a smoking pile of ash where the front door used to be.

[UPDATE: One of the many drawbacks of youtube is not only the horrible quality, but of course, you can never control the reliability of the link. Sorry.]

AT&T, and let’s be honest— MOST cable/phone/internet providers— take a short-term view of their customers. There is so much churn, and so many choices, that they go for the bottom line. They outsource, they create confusing plans (and groups of bundles of plans), and they treat people like robots. It is dangerous to act this way because without loyal customers, a company is vulnerable.

AT&T had an opportunity to do something extraordinary. They had an opportunity to create some goodwill, to give these customers, who are in extenuating circumstances, an exceptional experience. Imagine if they had offered to give this couple free cellular service for a few months until they were back on their feet, as well as wave any new installation or set-up fees that might be incurred at their new location. How much would that have cost this communications giant? And would that cost not be offset by a completely reversed TV news item, where a couple extolled AT&T as the one bright light in their storm?

Instead AT&T makes sure to kick them when they are down. And that creates negative equity, bad word of mouth, and Brand Decay sets in. The Azola’s didn’t even make this video. It was created by yet another disenfranchised customer who wanted to broadcast his or her unhappiness with the brand. AT&T isn’t seeing a lot of love these days. Without treating their own paying customers with respect, without creative solutions to unique problems, it will become increasingly difficult for them to keep and acquire customers. They need to start thinking more about the long term.

Jason Theodor Talks on Social Media Today #26 – Toyota WoW, Dove Onslaught, and Radiohead In Rainbows

I have the esteemed honour of being interviewed in Social Media Today #26.

I discovered the Social Media Today podcast in May of 2007 while researching the term “Social Media Optimization”, a label coined by Rohit Bhargava from Ogilvy Public Relations. He gave a good interview about the topic, and I was hooked. At the time Maggie Fox was at the helm as interviewer, but she recently passed the torch to Douglas Walker, a marketing blogger and entrepreneur among many many other things.

Last Sunday Doug interviewed me via Skype. We talked about some new viral marketing ventures, and label-less online music distribution. Here’s the SMT#26 outline:

1:04 Introduction of Jason Theodor

2:10 Discuss Dove Onslaught

10:08 Discuss Toyota World of Warcraft Viral Video

16:16 Discuss Radiohead’s Pay what you want strategy for new Album In Rainbows

21:38 So Long and Jason plugs his stuff

Doug promised to cut out all the ums and ahs and make me sound smart. I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, so let me know what you think in the comments.

Listen or download SMT#26 now!