Category: Innovation Design

At Wise Elephant it’s part of my job to listen to small businesses, sole proprietors, and creative professionals discuss their dreams, plans and goals. People are thinking forward, finding opportunities, making it happen. New businesses are forming, current businesses are working on new strategies, and new markets are opening. From where I sit the economy is picking up, it HAS picked up, stuff is moving. I’m excitedly impressed. I’m ridding myself of the cautious optimism I’ve carried for the past year, and turning up the moxie.

Then I turn on the tube, or listen to the radio, and I hear report after report of job losses, catastrophe, and closings. Yes, it’s true, it’s horrible, and I sympathize with all those people and families in trouble, but the repetition without solution is useless. There is no reporting of the solutions! I don’t hear them on CNN or FOX, or even NPR. Where are the pundits who point to the solutions, the successes, to the hard-working people who point the way out of this recession, are making strides, gaining new business, and plowing new paths.

Tell us these stories, let us galvanize our strengths, learn from each other, and get the greater economy working again. Until then, I’m turning off the mainstream news.

An Expansive Creative Economy (ECE) is a forward thinking creative cycle that rejuvenates neighborhoods and launches economies that grow.

It happens in many cities, a burst of creative energy that spawns a movement, invigorates neighborhoods, and propels the local into the national spotlight. Think of Seattle’s “Grunge” that both spawned a bevy of mainstream bands and put the coffee-cafe scene on the map. Would Starbucks be as successful without Grunge? I don’t think so.

The trick is to nurture an environment where these economies can blossom, the goal is to sustain them.

There are many ECEs at different stages all across the states as well as over the world. San Francisco has a matured ECE (The Castro) and a mid-life ECE (Mission District). NYC’s East Village is mid-life while Soho has matured. Mostly ECEs are founded by a small businesses (West London’s Rough Trade Records, NYCs CBGBs), a group of artist/creative individuals (Beat Poets in San Francisco, Musicians in Austin) and/or anchored by happenings (Charleston’s Spoleto Festival, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival).

In general ECEs need two things to launch: Supportive Infrastructure and Inclusive Behavior.

Supportive Infrastructure:
– Cheap rent within mixed-use areas (apartments over shops, lofts that can be shared)
– Easy/Quick access to affordable food (small restaurants/cafes, corner markets)
– Flexible employment (full-time/part-time, causal/expressive dress, unorthodox hours)
– Close to transport hubs (near the freeway, bus stops, train stations)

Inclusive Behavior:
– Invite the current neighborhood to participate. (Rough Trade opened in a West Indian neighborhood, they created an Island/Reggae section in their store)
– Accept all who are interested (CBGBs was for Country/Blue-Grass not post-punk, but that’s what it became)
– Seek to be a magnet for national migration, invite people from all over to be part of the process

ECEs start small and build up over decades (Austin’s SXSW festival built-up over 20 years, Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory for 30). Cities looking to grow their economies should strongly consider fostering environments where ECEs can blossom. I’ve seen cases where cities seek short-term gain and build Arts Districts at a mature levels (fancy shops, expensive housing) instead of the seed level, allowing them grow naturally, fostering a stronger foundation. For a much lower cost cities can support ECEs (zone areas for live/work, tax incentives for small creative shops/biz, not-foir-profits).

Patience is key, but the rewards are greater. We need more ECEs!

Coming soon: Part 2, stages of neighborhood growth.

Ideas for print-media to make new $ from their online sites, now.

Beyond the ongoing debate over what will eventually happen to newspapers I feel there needs to be some quick pragmatic thinking on what can be done “now.” The quickest changes can be made to print-media’s online sites.

Show me the static content for free. I’ll pay you for the active content.

It’s hard to stomach paying for something after it’s been free. Newspapers flipping the pay-wall switch on their online news sites are bound to annoy and alienate their audiences, yet there are current options to explore without having to invent any new technology or be concerned about future platforms. Future-forward thinking is important, but what can be accomplished in the short term can be just as valuable as seeking to discover the “next thing.”

Print-media has a huge inventory of data: articles, stats, images, etc. I call this “stuck content” as the shelf life of newly posted news or articles falls off a cliff the second day, sometimes by 98%. The problem lies in how to make the “stuck content” valuable for a longer period of time. Sure, I can dig through the archives, but the current search functionalities I’ve seen are far from sexy. I know the sites have gobs of available data; key-word searches aren’t enough.

So, how to un-stick the stuck content and make it active? Offer me something you can’t get anywhere else but online – my behavior and my preferences. Don’t sell my data to marketers, sell it to me! Mix the available content and data with my behavior, let me set a few preferences, and you have a paid model.

Here are five ideas towards creating active content:

1. Statistics: we all love stats, especially when it’s about our own behavior. Show me lots of stats about me; let me compare them to everyone else

2. Suggestion engine: use the stats to offer suggestions, allow me to discover articles through new paths, show me new ways to package the content

3. Categorization: be creative with how articles are linked to each other, align content into new verticals

4. Share the wealth: make it super easy for me to share links and embed branded content on my own site

5. Automation: allow me to create my own concierge that retrieves data for me, even when I’m not on the site

Show me the static content for free. Charge me for active content and the ability to un-stick the content in ways that make sense for me. Would I pay $10/month? Absolutely. $20? $50? Continually make the active content sexier, offer me new ways to access this data and I’ll be a long-term paying customer.

I heard this news story on NPR this morning on Concierge Medicine, another example of the subscription model which seems to be gaining ground. It’s my feeling that the subscription model is the trend to weather these rough economic times. It allows the provider to plan ahead, ideally for a year at a time. Even if initial revenues are initially lower, the security of knowing who your customers are and for how long increases efficiencies within a business, and will lead to increased profits over time (and better customer relationships).

What if supermarkets followed this model? Paying the market a monthly fee, signing up for an annual package. They put your credit on your shoppers card, let’s say with a 15% discount off of ticket prices. Then you could shop as normal, checking out using your shoppers card, you’d save a bundle, plus the market could plan better, possibly bringing prices down as efficiencies grew? The local gas company offers a flat-rate monthly payment, what other industries could benefit?

It finally happened, I was waiting for this day. I called a contact at an Ad Agency and their voicemail expressed they prefer to receive an email with the reason for the call in the subject line of the email. Then they would decide whether to call the emailer back. Email as the filter for the phone. Email as a filter for the noise? Or did they migrate to social media, where their daily contacts know how to find them, and leave them a quick update or comment to keep in touch? I have their email address, and will email them, but I just had a quick question, and sometimes it takes longer to write something than to call.

Is it that the phone is being abused? Too many calls? I don’t think so. Is it that we’re all so busy doing tasks that the time allowance for speaking on the phone has become a luxury? I think that’s it.

Anyone else using this cycle of asking callers to email the reason for their calls? I’m thinking of it for ourselves but many Marketing Gurus think this is the kiss of death. But I dunno anymore. Thoughts?

There have been a lot of editorials, online, tv, and print, on the success of Obama’s usage of social media to build momentum, raise awareness, raise money, and ultimately win his presidential campaign.  I believe his campaign was deep/faceted and requires a book-length study to sort out the details.

My local friend/competitor Duncan Alney weighed in on the social media aspect in his blog post recently and sought my comments. Below are my 2 cents:

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The Obama campaign was a classical painting, relying on tightly crafting each layer so the following one would have a strong foundation.

The stretchers, linen, nails were all top quality, meant to last centuries. The preparation too. The paints, brushes, all very specific in their function and usage based on years of training. By the time the artist begins to put pigment on the surface the canvas itself is beautiful, something not lost on the artist, it propels the artist forward with a reverence for the medium, the history, and the purpose of image-making.

This inherent quality in each step provides ample resiliency to attract different facets of a diverse audience. Those that prefer craft can admire the process, those that seek color can bask in the glow, those yearning for content find that front and center.

Using the logo-branding as an example, 2 points:
1. These images are based on a history of poster-making, of icon-branding. There are so many references.
2. One popular image was drafted by Shephard Fairey (the modestly famous creator of the OBEY stickers which like Kudzu is found almost everywhere and was anywhere a surface existed). Some folks who knew this facet and saw the added dimension.

We can point out the surface level examples of how the campaign “worked” (a local biz is putting on a paid seminar on how the lessons of the Obama campaign can add to your bottom line. Though I think it’s not as much about your bottom line as about having the courage to build “anything” from the ground up).

I think the essence of the lesson points to classical “patience” in the process; crafting each layer as tight as possible. When the painting is complete it sings to a wide audience on many deep levels.

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