Emergen-C copywriting

I've been looking at this ad for at least two weeks:

It's not quite right. Every time I read it I find it clunky somehow, especially the phrase "to press the number for his floor."

Wednesday night I was waiting for the subway and the solution came to me in a burst. Here's how the ad should read:

Jimmy the 
germophobe waits 
patiently for someone 
to press his floor 
number. Come on 12!

It's 10 characters shorter and has a much better rhythm and flow. You're welcome.

Don't tell me we're liars, thieves, birds

If you don’t attend this Meetup, I’ll kill this dog

Chris Tindal is giving a guest talk on November 21 to the Toronto Content Strategy Meetup about Gastropost. If you only attend one content strategy Meetup in Toronto this year, please make it this one. I saw Chris give a version of this talk last year, and I’ve been raving about it ever since.

 

I mean no disrespect to the other guest speakers of 2013. All were excellent. We had a heartfelt talk about storytelling. A transparent discussion of why Random House started an online magazine of ideas. An iPad and iPhone app that mixes content and commerce to sell artwork. An in-depth talk about how to merge UX, information architecture and content strategy. Did I mention content strategy celebrity Rahel Bailie? How about multi-screen content strategy?

Hot damn -- 2013 was a pretty great year for the Toronto Content Strategy Meetup.

Back to Chris. The reason his Gastropost guest talk is so vital is that he talks about something I’m extremely passionate about. Something I’ve experienced firsthand: the Lean Startup. There is a lot of blah-blah-blah about Lean Startup and minimum viable product. But buried between the hype and the buzzwords is an incredible approach to solving problems and creating new products and services. The catch is that turning theory into practice can be difficult. Chris’s talk explains the process in a way that is equal parts informative and inspiring.

During my time at the CFC Media Lab, I was incredibly fortunate to work with three other amazing dudes and co-create txt2hold (and later tweet2hold). We didn’t use the Lean Startup as our guidebook, but we did create a working, functional prototype (minimum viable product) in 10 weeks (with the help of amazing mentors and the programming skills of Pearl Chen). The experience, while not quite life-changing, was one of the most significant projects I was a part of in the last few years. And I heard many echoes of my time at the CFC in Chris’s talk last year.

The other great thing about Gastropost is how it bridges the gap between print and digital. Instead of viewing dead tree media as a liability, Gastropost leverages it as an incredible asset. I’ve spent the past few years insisting on the importance of bringing the physical and digital worlds together. Chris agrees.

This is the best $5 you’re going to spend in 2013. Especially since most of your fiver goes directly to Chris Tindal. So spread the word. Tell your friends. Make it happen.

Biggeidea is back on Instagram

What comes after laggards? Me.

I’m here to announce that biggeidea is back on Instagram. I downloaded the app two or three years ago, used it twice, and gave up. Because clearly I’m better at anti-social media then the opposite thing.

But two weeks ago I signed up for a Social Media Strategy course. Our first assignment involves picking a platform and pimping it like hell. So I chose Instagram in order to prove to the world that I can communicate without the use of words.

I’m enjoying Instagram a lot more than I thought, despite the fact that it’s owned by evil Facebook. Having a decent smartphone helps – my old 3GS was not conducive to either good photo taking or a decent user experience. My iPhone 5 erases both of those problems.

I realize that there are already a thousand other essays about Instagram. But I did want to mention two quick things that gave me a pleasant surprise.

The first is that Instagram changed my behaviour. Not in the obvious, obsessive-compulsive manner that mobile social media tends to encourage. (Although it did that too.) I mean changing my actions IRL. I saw the plume of smoke and diverted two blocks. I’ve never done that before. The plume photo was the also the first time I tried to carefully document an urban moment. Usually I take two quick clicks and keep going. This time I shot two dozens photos, from different angles, until I got the one I wanted.

The second surprise was that I can take decent photos. I’ve reached a stage where the extent of many of my talents are clear to me. I’m not a guitar virtuoso. I can sing well enough to perform specific karaoke songs, but otherwise I don’t have an amazing voice. The list goes on. And as a word guy, I came to the conclusion that photography was best left in the hands of skilled professionals. I think that’s still true for indoor photography, where the basics of lighting seem to allude me. But outdoors, without a flash? That I can handle. Plus the filters certainly help.

What I’m still not comfortable doing is posting a bunch of adequate photos that document my day-to-day existence. I have lots of photos on my phone that serve as visual diary entries, but I consider them either mundane or private or both. I think my tendency get overly precious with my visual and written content is one of the reasons I’m not that amazing at Twitter – I don’t have the fast, fun and fluid ability to quip at the speed of the Internet (unlike say Ivor Tossell). I can make people laugh in real life, and I can craft a great line in an essay, but I tend to overthink Twitter.

My goal is to try and underthink Instagram to see if that makes me better at social media. In the meantime, this shot took five minutes to get right:

12 Sexy Hipster Halloween Costumes for 2013

Sexy Instagram foodie

Sexy pre-prohibition bartender

Sexy SEO specialist

Sexy vegan

Sexy zombie

Sexy vegan zombie

Sexy post-modern academic

Sexy social media ninja

Sexy Twitter feminist

Sexy charcuterie architect

Sexy pop-up shop

Sexy artisanal beet pickler

Bye-Bye Miss American Rye

Nothing profound – just wanted to point out how quickly Sazerac Rye is disappearing from LCBO shelves. It went on sale Saturday, October 12th, and by end of day a significant amount of stock was gone. I checked again on Sunday evening and there was even less available. I don't have precise numbers, but I'm guessing that at least 60 or 70% of what they had was gone in two days.

This normally would have panicked me, as I was out of town for the Thanksgiving weekend. But thankfully some LCBO locations screwed up yet again and put Sazerac out early. (This is a reoccurring pet peeve of bourbon, whiskey and rye nerds in the GTA.) I grabbed two bottles on Monday, October 7th, from a location that will remain nameless. Worth noting is that the Dundas and Dovercourt location showed 120 bottles in their inventory on the afternoon of October 7th. By Tuesday morning their inventory showed as empty. That means 120 bottles were sold in less than 24 hours. My guess is that a handful of cocktail bars in the neighbourhood are really, really happy with that particular mistake. Or maybe one lucky bar owner is sitting on a stash of booze worthy of Boardwalk Empire.

(And yes, I wrote this entry mainly because I had such a great blog title.)

Artificial Couple Lives in Fake Loft

"She even made a concession to Gordie, allowing him a 'man’s corner' with a flat-screen TV and video games."

Cocktails by the bottle are silly

A few months ago someone asked me what I thought of cocktails by the bottle. I thought the idea was silly. But since my journalist friend was looking for a quote, I spent a few minutes finding a more verbose and overly clever way of saying that: 

"I've tried and enjoyed cocktails from scratch and barrel-aged cocktails. But bottled cocktails appear to be designed for status-obsessed folks who find traditional bottle service insufficiently douche-y."

"Bottled cocktails negate the entire premise of a bartender tailoring a drink around your favourite spirit or bitter. A pitcher of beer, sure. But walking into a bar with four friends and ordering a bottle of Manhattans is a negation of free will. Groupthink maybe. Groupdrink never."

It turned out that my friend was looking for a quote in favour of the trend. So I didn't get quoted. Oh well.

A peek inside Digital Content Strategy Demystified 2013

Last year I taught Digital Content Strategy Demystified for the first time. I had a blast, and I’m looking forward to teaching it again this year. (Hint, hint, my course starts on October 2, and is offered through the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies. I urge you to sign up soon if you’re interested).

Based on student feedback, along with the trends and patterns I’ve observed over the past 12 months, here are some course elements I plan to add or augment this year:

Viewing content as a business asset

One of the members of the Toronto Content Strategy Meetup, Pamela Kostur, recently taught a course entitled “Treating Content as a Business Asset.” Rahel Anne Bailie and Noz Urbina also tackle content strategy through the lens of ROI and business objectives in their recent book. Not that other content strategists avoid ROI, but as the discipline has matured, the conversation has moved away from justifying the need for content strategy in the first place (Kristina Halvorson et al) and toward a more explicit cost-benefit analysis.

Way more social media

The headline is pretty self-explanatory. I underestimated the interest in this aspect of content strategy by a significant margin. More social media, more earlier and more often during this year’s course.

Even more design thinking

I designed an entire class around ideation, brainstorming and design thinking. I plan to squeeze some quick-and-dirty user research into the experience this year, along with a few other nifty surprises.

A stronger push for mobile-first content strategy

Less is more. Less is better. Regardless of whether you’re viewing a site on a mobile device or a desktop computer.

Brand journalism

I talked in some detail about content marketing last year. This year I will add brand journalism into the mix.

Plus…

I’m careful to always ask students what they hope to get from my course. This year will be no different. Don’t see something important to you? Avoid panic. Just let me know and I’m sure I can accommodate you.

Is this the line?

Today I was standing in line at Delica Kitchen, waiting to buy a donut. (Okay, two donuts. You caught me). I had been waiting about three or four minutes when a young woman walked in. She looked at the line I was in, then she looked at the people who had ordered their food but were still waiting to receive it. Then she asked me "Is this the line?"

I'm never sure exactly why, but this question irritates me. And it shouldn't. Granted, based on the visual evidence the woman had access to, it was pretty clear that it was the line. But I can appreciate that she wanted to confirm she was in the right place, so that she wasn't wasting her time.

However, I feel that this question implies the following: "Hey. You're clearly all a bunch of idiots. I'm way smarter than you, so I'm going to locate the real line, not the fake line you're standing in." I'm probably the only person on earth who thinks this way, but there you have it.

In July I was in line for the infamous Rain Room at the MoMA. I got up at 6am, and was in line by 7am. Around 7:30am, a woman approached me and asked where the end of the line was. So I turned around and pointed past the six or seven people behind me toward the end of the line.

"That's the end of the line?" she asked.

Because I had got up at 6am, I was a little grouchy. So I said, "Yes, keep walking until you don't see any more people. That's the end of the line."

She paused for a moment to absorb and process the fact that I'd just been rude. Then she said, "Oh, okay, that's how it's going to be."

Then she walked to the end of the line and spent the next few minutes confirming with the people in front of her that she was, in fact, standing at the end of the line.

Given that the Rain Room line was really long, and given the fact that there were two lines (members and non-members), I understand the need to verify. When I arrived at 7am I confirmed that I was in the member's line. But I managed to find the end of the line on my own, without any problems. Either that means I'm really smart, or really stupid. I haven't decided which yet.