Mark Clement

Are You an A-Hole?

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a LONG time. Check it out now. Thanks me later. 

Evian Roller Babies Spot

Check out this hilarious and really well done clip from Evian. Prepare to smile.

The Pacific

For anyone out there who is a fan of 'Band of Brothers', you'll be thrilled to know that the follow up, 'Pacific' is scheduled to air sometime around March 2010. Like BoB, Pacific is produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. The production budget for this is rumored to be around $200 million, making it the most expensive TV program ever produced. Check out the trailer below:

New Music

Wanted to take a minute and promote a phenomenal new band I've been digging the last few weeks. The band is called Green River Ordinance and the album is called Out of My Hands. The first single 'Endlessly' is destined to be a huge hit as soon as mainstream radio gets a hold of it. Definitely an indie flavor but the tunes are so catchy that it lends itself to a bit of pop sensibility. For fans of Plain White T's or Augustana. I know that's a little broad but they really do fit right there in between somewhere. Do yourself a favor and download this ASAP. You can also catch them on tour this summer with Gavin DeGraw although I'm really disappointed to add that they aren't currently scheduled anywhere in the southeast. 

Check them out and let me know if you like. BTW, when's the last time you bought an actual CD in a store as opposed to downloading? Other than buying AC/DC as a gift last year (they aren't on iTunes) I literally can't remember the last real life CD I bought. I'm curious. 

Men, Leadership & Depression

"He who lives by the approval of others will die by the absence of the same." - Steven Furtick

I don't think there's a man on the planet that can't identify with this statement to some degree or another. At a minimum I think we all want approval from our families, our wives and our children. Could write an entire post about getting approval from our fathers alone. For some of us this approval addiction goes much further, permeating our professional lives. The hardcore addicts can't ever get enough of it, even when they are at the pinnacle of 'success'. Often times the more accolades they receive the more they desire. It's never enough.

In our new 'global community' of the web, twitter, facebook, blogs, etc...we're even more exposed to the success and triumphs of others in our field and thus can suffer by comparison at an even deeper level. We not only want the approval of those we lead but from our ever expanding peer group as well. Are we being re-tweeted? How many hits is our blog getting? How many followers? Is anyone paying attention to us at all?

So what happens when you don't get your fix? What happens when it all goes away and you suddenly find yourself alone with...well... with nothing but yourself? Where does your self worth come from then? What's next? For many men, the 'what's next' is depression. 

Men don't talk about it much, but depression is real. No man is immune, especially those who find their worth in the approval of others. Quite frankly, the higher we climb, the greater the opportunity we have to fail. And to make matters worse, as men, we let pride, shame and a fear of appearing weak prevent us from getting the help we need. But help is out there in many, many forms. And you need to know that you are not alone. check out this clip from Tom Johnson, former CEO of the L.A. Times and then CNN. 

Find more videos like this on MedicalMommas.com

7 Keys To Starting A Movement

[The best 3 minutes of your day]

A few things I think we can learn from this video.
1. One man can start a movement.
2. A movement need not be started by the most skilled member of the movement.
3. When beginning your movement and you look around and no one else is joining the dance, just keep dancing.
4. When the one guy who joins your movement slowly fades away, keep going.
5. Before you know it, the people joining your movement won’t even know you started it.
6. When your movement takes a life of it’s own, just let go. There will be no stopping it.
7. The very people who are staring at you like your nuts as you movement alone, will be the very same people dancing the hardest in the end.

by loswhit in Deep Stuff

Twitter Envy

Over the past couple of months I've heard a ton of talk about feelings of inadequacy brought on by the world of twitter. For some there seems to be a sense of panic and intimidation when staring at the flashing cursor inside the 'what are you doing?' box. There's an unspoken expectation that we have to say something profound, thought provoking, yes, even life changing. That's a lot of pressure for 140 tiny characters. Good grief! I've heard guys talk about wasting many precious minutes each day (sometimes hours) trying to come up with something to say, searching others blogs and tweets for that nugget that others have missed.

Allow me to share 3 words that could change your life: less is more. Trust me when I tell you... and I think I speak for the entire Twitter nation... nobody will mind. After all I think we're all sick to death of the guys who:
1) share their daily devotion with us all...verse by verse...every single, stinkin', day. we get it. you're very spiritual. seriously, if you feel inspired to share, then share. but a quick biblical reference is adequate. after all, i have a bible and i'm not afraid to use it. i don't need a play by play. thanks.
2) tweet 3-4 times consecutively because they can't fit it all in to 140 characters. hey run-on tweeter guy, if this is you, then you've clearly missed the point.
3) use twitter as their e-mail account. there's a little thing called direct messaging you need to get familiar with.
4) endlessly promote their book, their conference, their name, their whatever. i mean come on, if i'm following you it's because i know who you are. i've most likely already read your book AND liked it or else i wouldn't be following you. see how that works?
5) are constantly asking us all silly questions and actually expecting us to respond. you need to get familiar with the word 'rhetorical'.
6) you fill in the blank.

In short, there's really nothing to be envious of. I'll even go as far as to say that some of our heavy handed twittering friends are trying to compensate for something themselves. IE we're all in the same boat. So don't be that guy. If you've got something to say, say it. Otherwise, and I know this is WAY out of the box...don't. Don't say nothin' at all. Please. Help me help you help me.

Thanks for playing.
MC

Punishing Your Fans: A Lesson From Kraft

From a former Kraft fan's email:

I’m a lover of Kraft Foods. I started receiving this FREE magazine years ago (got one at my desk). It contains these awesome recipes, which of course all include Kraft products. I’ve recommended this magazine to everyone I know that loves to cook. We’ve all made recipes out of this magazine. When you see that recipe on the church buffet table, everyone knows it was on the cover of the last Kraft issue. The website is awesome as well! You can even search recipes by items in your pantry.

Why am I upset? They’ve started charging for their magazine. After all these years, after all the “yes, please keep sending me those awesome magazine” surveys I’ve filled out. They’ve started charging. Yeah, it’s only 12 bucks. But did we care that every ad was for Kraft and every recipe included Kraft products? No. Because if was supposed to be a gift to their customers. And now, they are just like everyone else. And I’m not special anymore…and neither is my mom.

Wow. Huge, massive FAIL on Kraft’s part. All of a sudden charging for something that a large amount of people - a lot of which were fans of yours - used to get for free. For free. I just don’t understand the (non) thinking that goes into a move like this. Did you read what Brandy said? She’s recommended the magazine to everyone she knows who shares her passion. She doesn’t even mind all the Kraft ads in the pub. She’s an advocate (and a great cook). And Kraft doesn’t care. All they care about is a soft economy and passing the buck to make up for their losses.

I followed up with Brandy and asked if she’s going to pay the $12 for the subscription. She isn’t.

I asked her if this would put her off of buying Kraft products. And she answered that it’ll probably be indirectly, but yes, she’ll probably be buying less Kraft brands because all of the recipes in the magazine recommended Kraft products… “and you ALWAYS follow the recipe.”

What’s the real trade off here? Will Kraft really be saving a lot of money in the long run? Or have they damaged their relationship with one of the most important groups they could ever have - their base?

Bad move Kraft.

(Thanks to Spike at Brains on Fire for the post)

Too Much Info: Filtering Your Social Network

(from Fast Company blog)

There are plenty of tools out there for adding "friends" to your social network: Glue lets you connect with others who like the same media and entertainment sites as you, Twinkle lets you discover people tweeting near you, WhosHere helps you find "chance encounters" with people--whatever that entails--and social Web browsers like Flock lets you channel the musings of your entire social media constellation into one easy-to-read basin.

The problem: these apps work. Often too well--the basin is overflowing.

When I look at my Facebook News Feed, Google Talk list and my Twitter client, here's what I see: old friends, workmates, acquaintances, and then, in a much smaller group, real friends. In an article this week entitled, "What's a Friend Worth?" BusinessWeek writer John Byrne went straight to the source--Facebook HQ in Palo Alto--to figure out just how many real friends a given Facebook user actually has in his or her network.

According to internally collected data, Facebook reports that "an average Facebook user with 500 friends actively follows the news of only about 40 of them, communicates with about 20, and keeps in close touch with about 10. Those with smaller networks follow even fewer." Anecdotally speaking, Byrne writes, even committed Web users like New York venture capitalist Fred Wilson can cut their swarm down to about 50 without stepping on too many (valued) toes.

But most of us don't want to do this. The whole point of social networking was to glean value from those most tenuous relationships, ones that might have been lost in earlier times, but could still come in great use. Therein lies the dissonance: We want to talk to 80% of the people in our networks just 10% of the time.

In keeping with the great democratization that is the Internet, all users on your social networks are, for the most part, created equally. The fatal flaw with Facebook, Twitter and the rest: The updates arrive in chronological order, and are therefore not always personally relevant. This means you end up hearing more from the people who talk more, not the people you care about most. In the case of Twitter, of course, you can use a desktop client to aggregate the people you want to hear from more. And with Facebook, you can edit down the coverage of a friend on your News Feed, but to do so for every one of hundreds or thousands of friends would be mind-numbing.

Glue takes one step towards solving this problem; it treats friends' comments (about music, people, movies and the like) as real content and filters them by relevance and not recency. But that doesn't solve the larger problem: how do I cut down the flow of social flotsam that I don't want, and get my friends to the top of my feeds?

This month, two tools emerged that do just that. The first is Web-based: PeopleBrowsr launched in alpha this week. PeopleBrowsr's mantra is "filter, sort, follow, post, repeat," which luckily seems to be in order of priority. The site first asks you to login. And no you don't have to create yet another account, as you can use your Twitter or Facebook credentials to login. Then the site asks for your credentials for the other networks and apps you use most. Once you're done (which might take a while; this process is still a little buggy), you get "stacks" of feeds from each service you use.

Stacks can be organized geographically, or by trends, topics, keywords, and users, meaning that you can distill the feed to display exactly the kind of content that you want to read, and none of the detritus. This is a boon for anyone who's feeling overloaded by friends, but doesn't want to commit the brutality of what I'll call "social cleansing": the purge of unused contacts from all your networks.

There's a lot going on here, so I won't try to summarize all of PeopleBrowsr's features (which includes searching, "campaigns," aesthetic themes, and of course, posting), and the interface is obtuse at best (if you're a social net vet), and plain old terrifying at worst (if you're a noob). But if you need to quell the onslaught, you'll figure it out, and future versions will surely get better.

If it's a mobile onslaught you're suffering, check out Zensify, released as a "preview" for iPhone this week. It's an aggregator, like other apps, pulling together feeds from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Delicious, and a handful of others. But it also lets you perform custom searches across your entire social graph, and add certain people as "favorites" who appear in one centralized feed, no matter which network they're chosen from.

Got other tips for filtering out the wheat from the chaff? Comment away.

How To Relaunch A Brand

Here at Big Picture Media we're constantly working with clients to brand or re-brand their organizations.  Most come to the table wanting things done in a hurry and it always takes some effort to help them understand that re-branding in particular, when done right, is not a quick fix but a very involved process.  It's more than just a shiny new logo.  It's not just changing what we communicate, but how we communicate.  Really gets into the DNA of a brand. 

This video is a great example of showing a piece of that process and the application of it.  Most of you have never heard of Long's Horseradish, but you could very soon.   Check it out.

PS to be super clear, Long's is not our client, this is just a great example of how this process works.