Posts tagged stories
Lessons From a Girlfriend Application
Apr 18th
Hey Team,
I’ve been doing a lot of interviews about this contest over the last few days and one of the questions that continues to come up is, “What made you think this was a good idea?” (Make sure you read that question with honest curiosity and not with blatant shock at my audacity/stupidity. Please…)
I’ve worked as “a creative” long enough to know that the time honored, “Where do ideas come from?” question never has an easy answer. Ever. All you can do is throw out a quipy (we’re just going to pretend that’s a word for the moment) sound bite and hope that’s enough for whoever to move on to the next question. Usually you end up telling a tiny piece of the truth. The largest piece of the whole pie will satisfy most…but I always feel like I’m letting people down if I don’t share fully.
Obviously I took a lot of cues from last year’s onslaught of employment contests, but that’s just an easy hook to hang ideas on. People get it if you tell them you’re just flipping those contests on their head, but it doesn’t explain where the idea comes from or why.
(I’m realizing this is a very big story. So for today…here’s one more tiny piece.) I was standing in the shower last night going over the day’s interviews (Because, honestly, who doesn’t think better in the shower?!) when my thoughts slid to a special little lady’s upcoming birthday. Which in turn led to the “we’ve come so far” thoughts. Which then morphed into thoughts of how we got started. And although that’s an even more convoluted story with even more pieces of truth, the fact remains, it all started with a contest…an application really.
Going away to college can be a lonely affair and that first spring in the dorms is pretty hard to take as you’re watching couples wander through the quad all day while you can’t even get up the guts to find a way to get the girls you do like to notice you. My solution? The Girlfriend Application.
Printed out, hung on my dorm room door and emailed to a small group of ladies, this was my first official lesson that the only sure fire way to get people to pay attention is to break their expectations. When people know things are supposed to happen one way…that’s when it’s practically your duty to do a 180. (And if you can entertain along the way, even better.)
Bottom line: I can’t call the experience anything other than an overwhelming success. Fast-forward ten years, and I’m standing in the shower looking forward to celebrating my favorite “applicant’s” birthday.
I’ll see if I can get @katymoe to scan and post the application tonight (Yep, it’s still around after almost a decade.), the only question I remember off hand is:
Sex (circle one): F
So, what makes me think GEitW will work? This isn’t how things are supposed to happen.
I’m done.
Brett.
The Opposite of a Good Story is No Story
Apr 16th
The opposite of a good story is not a bad story. It’s no story. (A bad story is just a good story poorly told.)
And that is the fundamental problem with most corporate blogs.
Hey Team,
I spent a lot of time throughout the last few months trying to decide on the best way to approach this non-traditional employment contest and more importantly, whether or not it was even a good idea…
What finally sent me over the edge was the epiphany I had while perusing a few corporate blogs. Terrible, terrible corporate blogs. The seas of the internet are littered with the detritus of these listing ships. (How’s that for boat talk?)
I blame “social media gurus.”
For the last year and a half these guys (and ladies) have been popping up everywhere, spreading the gospel of company blogs, twitter accounts and facebook fan pages. It’s so easy to sit in front of a computer and read about squeezing every last drop of attention out of social media that I think people have started to lose track of what’s really important. Now everyone is using these tools and instead of creating an impact all most people are doing is adding to the clutter.
All ANY social media site gives you is a stage to shout from in frustration at rows and rows of empty seats. (Albeit a very large stage…with cheap rent. And fancy footlights. And heavy foot traffic out front, so sometimes people wander in just to see what’s going on. And every once in awhile one of those people that wanders in actually clicks with what you’re saying but they know full well that none of their friends would be into it so they don’t tell anyone else and now you’re just shouting at a couple of scattered people who are so embarrassed to admit that they’re interested in what you have to say that they wont even sit anywhere near each other in the theater or even make eye-contact in the lobby. This metaphor has gone too far…) The point is, you can scream about coupon codes and technical jargon until you’re blue in the face but that doesn’t mean anyone is listening. This is where I can help.
Sometimes companies just don’t have anything to say. It’s not always for lack of desire or for lack of stories to tell (There are always stories to tell…I still tell entirely too many tales about working at In-N-Out Burger.), sometimes it’s just about having the time or the ability to look at their own company from the outside. Things that you see everyday and have taken for granted may be incredibly interesting to the rest of the world but without the right perspective it just looks like an average Monday.
So, here I am. Ready to offer up a pre-built story with a pre-built buzz handled by an experienced storyteller, and I can’t wait to see whose stories I will be telling!
What do you think?
I’m done.
Brett.
