The “M” Word

Maybe you’re a poet. Maybe you’re an activist. Maybe you knit lampshades.

You spent a lot of time writing those poems, agitating and knitting. The one thing that we all have in common is that we all need to connect with people who might, at some point, want what we create.

If you want people to pay money, and even if you want to keep your art pure, by getting people to pay in attention rather than money, we all have to get our stuff to market. Eek. Marketing. (Please read on!)

(Please forgive me, ghost of Bill Hicks. Just trying to help.)

You might sing a better song than that person on TV, but they somehow (probably unfairly, using evil trickery) got their stuff to market.

Fame isn’t meritocratic. In the bad old days, all you could do was whine about monopolists and the TV-industrial complex. Doesn’t have to be like that anymore.

Some people don’t like the word “marketing”, and that’s why Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book about ideas spreading and called it The Tipping Point. It made people feel clever and became a best-seller.

Turns out people are interested in marketing if you call it something else. This is marketing marketing.

Where Gladwell wrote the The Tipping Point for the general audience, Seth Godin wrote Spreading The Ideavirus for people who wanted to get stuff done and out there.

He made it free and downloadable.

In All Marketers Are Liars, Godin suggests that if you have an idea, and you want people to engage with it, you’re in marketing, whether you know it or not. (He might be lying, though!)

But Seth’s early innovation was Permission Marketing. The idea here is that you shouldn’t bother people who don’t want to hear from you. It’s common sense to you and me, but some in the marketing world needed Seth to write a whole book about it!

The old model revolved around the right (purchased with bales of cash) to interrupt people over and over again until they give in, and buy Coke or vote for UKIP.

It still works, evidently, but the internet changes things a little bit – and it’s good news for you!

How many Viagra emails have you opened lately? How many ads have you skipped lately? Now think about emails and messages from people you want to hear from (anticipated, personal and relevant, as Godin puts it).

That Viagra salesman (it has to be a man, right?) that just spammed a billion people is getting his ass kicked, in attention terms, by your little mailing list, because everybody on it wanted to hear from you.

Your list (or however you prefer to connect) wins, because you made a genuine connection with people who like what you do.

Whatever it is you’re making, (poems, social change, knitted lampshades), if it’s for other people, you need to build a following and get it to them.

Yes, it’s a lot harder to do for those of us without powerful media connections, but it used to be impossible. Now it’s not.

So, just to round up, build away with the social networks, lists, and what have you, but build permission at the same time.

Good luck!

PS. Some of my best friends are marketers. Go easy on me if you read this, guys!

Standard

Slipping Up!

Happy Monday! Today’s the day I take my son (seven years old) ice-skating.

I always say to him, “I remember when you were a baby, you couldn’t even crawl! We used to have to carry you everywhere. Then you learned to crawl, then you could walk and run, and now look at you. You can skate!”

He’s probably sick of hearing it, but I’m taking the opportunity to sneakily reinforce the idea that no-one taught him a lot of crucial stuff. He can’t remember being between the ages of 0-3, being helpless and then helping himself.

We did our first stint on the ice at Christmas. He was wobbly at first, there was a fair bit of falling over, but after about three sessions, he stopped holding on to me, another three sessions after that, he’s like a pro!

He only asked me once, at the beginning, how to skate. I said, “Just try and stay on your feet and go, there’s no secret.”

Don’t get me wrong, he might benefit from some lessons, but I like that he’s gotten himself to the point where he’s having fun with it.

This week, I’ll be writing and singing for my supper. A lot of people taught me a lot of different things (thanks!), but no-one quite taught me how to do this kind of work I’m doing now.

It was (and will probably continue to be) a fair bit of falling over.

(A bit like being a parent!)

Standard

Kill It!

When I was in my 20s, on a health kick, I tried running. It hurt. I tried again a few years later. It hurt again. But somehow I took it seriously and did what I could, a little bit every day.

A few (!) years on, I’m really into it. Just like I don’t need to get motivated to prepare a meal every day, I don’t need to get motivated to go running every day. If I miss it, it’s like I’m robbing myself.

It took a bit of commitment early on (when it hurt) to get this point. The key was getting out there. One foot in front of the other. I try to remember my history with running when embarking on new things.

Some days I look at a blank page and feel like not writing. Even though I know most of the things I’m proud of resulted in me slaying a blank page.

If you’re out there feeling it too, the best book I read on the subject was The War Of Art, by Steven Pressfield. In the book he calls the self-sabotage instinct “resistance”. It helps to give your enemy a name. It helps to know your enemy (“the enemy is a great teacher”).

As soon as we know we’re up against this ferocious, tenacious enemy that takes many forms (tons of really sound, logical reasons not to create, not to take a leap), we’ve got a fighting chance. I found the book useful for those hard times.

I’m trying to minimise the advice-y stuff, because I know you’re out there, on the brink of a breakthrough, and with the best will in the world, some well-meaning advice might just throw you off course!

Where your breakthrough lies, it’s not on any of the charts. Let it rip, whatever works, but I reckon it starts with getting out there, maybe for a little jog.

Standard

How To Talk About Things You Care About

It’s not always easy to talk or write about what you believe in (especially if you really care!), but this might help.

George Lakoff is a cognitive linguist (please keep reading, it gets better!). When I first heard the title of his book, Don’t Think Of An Elephant, I’ll confess, I thought of an elephant.

The idea is that when we’re talking to each other, we’re putting (sort-of) pictures in each other’s heads.

He calls the pictures “frames”. You have a frame for an elephant. You just saw your elephant picture, I just saw mine. They might be different.

Now say, for example, when you hear the words “capitalist”, or “socialist”, or “Christian”, or “atheist”, other pictures and emotions (frames) will pop into your head. Probably quite powerful ones.

They’ll vary from person to person. None are more correct than others. They just exist. They’ve been under construction since you were a baby, so you’re probably stuck with them.

About half of Americans believe that “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is in their Constitution. Who could argue with that? Did Jesus say that?

It’s actually from the Communist Manifesto! I guess lots of people like the statement, but they don’t like the frame that pops into their head when they hear the word “communist”.

If you care about your idea being heard (political or not), it might be food for thought.

Here’s five minutes of George Lakoff talking about frames, if you have time. It’s really interesting!

If you want to think about something else…

Elephant!

Standard

Joke Stealing: The Upside

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

…So wrote Upton Sinclair. What a great line. It’s witty and insightful. Steal it. Use it. Everybody does. That’s why it’s so famous.

I used to sell clothes to people who had shops for a friend of mine. I sold T-shirts and fleeces with designs on them, drawn by my friend, who was a talented and funny artist.

Her designs got ripped off a few times by greetings card companies, but there was one design that was just un-stealable.

It was so her style, you’d have to rip the whole thing off, which would mean becoming her. Which was impossible.

I’ve noticed if I want to tell a Johnny Vegas joke, or a Dom Irrera joke, or a Mike Wilmot joke, or a Rich Hall* joke to someone, I pretty much have to mimic the comedian in question.

It’s like an anti-piracy device built in to the material. You have to add the persona (and thereby crediting the creator).

I don’t quite know what it all means, but if you make a thing that’s as utterly nickable and costless to steal as a great joke, you may as well get something out of it. Like Upton Sinclair. You might read some of his other stuff now.

Couple of thoughts:

1) Is there any way you can inject a bit more you into your more spreadable stuff?

2) And which of your lines only work when you’re behind it? Maybe that’s a signpost to your next joke**.

People used to tell me there was a guy on the circuit doing one of my jokes (good luck with that!). He’s probably in another line of work now.

I reckon if the joke was so steal-able, my mission should be to make the next thing I come up with more unique to me. It’s about the only thing I can control.

Don’t get me wrong, I would definitely try and sue if I thought I could get some dosh out of it, and I’m sure there’d be lawyer out there willing to take my money to try, even if it was futile.

It’s difficult to get a person to see the futility of a thing when their income depends on them not seeing it.

*There he is again! Sorry, regular readers!

**This is just my home-spun rubbish. Remember the Golden Rule – don’t listen to anyone!

Standard

I Know You Have Something To Say

I was talking to a nursery school teacher once. She said that when you see little kids playing, one of the the first things you hear them say is, “That’s not fair!”

If you’re reading this and you’re 12, tell me you’re not a little confused about how adults carry on and how they tell you to carry on. If you’re 30+ and you’ve had a lifetime of bosses, tell me you don’t have any feelings on co-operation versus coercion.

Those negative comments on YouTube are a creative act*, compared to just consuming. In fact, some people are at their most artistic when they’re running things down, and that’s a shame.

We’ve got no shortage of opinions, thoughts and feelings on a wide range of topics.

There is a shortage of people who can turn those thoughts and feelings into something useful to the rest of us who live outside the thinker’s head.

You’re an expert when it comes to your own experience of life. Paint us a picture, write us a story, yes, even do us a drum solo. Let’s hear it.

*Maybe the answer to not liking things is not trolling. Maybe it’s to build a more pleasing thing. Build a better YouTube channel, write a better joke. You’re already in front of the computer!

Standard

Chewing Gum For The Eyes

This might be my favourite description of TV:

If you were a being from outer space watching people making and consuming TV, you’d see 0.001% of humanity inserting ideas and images into the minds of 99.999% of humanity.*

At media and publishing companies, there’s a person or a whole department whose job it is to tell people no.

Now the good news:

As the 99.999%, you can really choose what to with your eyeballs these days.

As the 99.999%, we can make things for each other.

PS. If you have nine seconds, and you fancy a bit of chewing gum, here’s Father Ted on this issue.

* I forget who said this, but it was on David Barsamian’s Alternative Radio.

Standard

First Night Nerves And Picking Your Advice

Here’s some useful advice I got before my first stand-up gig.

I was really nervous the day before.

I had tried some of my lines out on actual people. There was no Twitter back then. I knew from their reaction that my first gig would be carnage.

I was lucky enough to be able to ask Rich Hall for advice. I said to Rich, “Is there anything I should keep in mind when it’s all going tits-up?”

He said, “Yeah, remember this. EVERY. BODY. DIES…”

I tuned out for the rest of it. (He went on to say, “…Even me!”)

That’s not the useful advice I meant. After performing for a few years, I now totally get what he was preparing me for, and what a generous thing it was to say, but at the time it shook me.

As it turned out, angels intervened and my first open spot was cancelled due to someone in the venue having a heart-attack before I got there*. Phew.

My next bite at the cherry was three months later. This time, when I got nervous the day before, I asked a newish act friend of mine if he had any advice.

He said, “Yeah. Just stand there, get through your five minutes. If you get a couple of laughs, literally two, you’re doing really well”.

This really took the pressure off and helped me get through those hard early gigs.

Maybe, because my new act friend was having experiences a bit closer to my own, his advice helped. Maybe you have to travel a bit of road to be able to interpret the advice of someone so far into a journey you’re just starting out on.

Maybe the lesson is that everybody’s got a valid point of view, but no-one knows what you need.

Or maybe the lesson is cut down on fried food.

*(The show before my cancelled first gig was called “Cabaret Extreme”. Ironically, the flyer said “You’ll die laughing, or we’ll die trying”)

Standard

Mmm. Apple Pie.

There’s a line from a book that keeps bubbling up in my head since I read it (a few years ago now).

It’s from Carter Beats The Devil by Glen David Gold. Carter, a magician, is being grilled by an investigator, who is trying to throw him off balance by talking about two other magicians that he’d seen doing a similar rope trick to Carter’s. Carter responds:

“There are few illusions that are truly original, it’s a matter of presentation… In other words, I didn’t invent sugar or flour, but I bake a mean apple pie.”

Happy baking!

Standard

How Do We Do It? Volume! Jokes Are A Numbers Game

It took 100 million hours to build Wikipedia*. Phew. But that’s a drop in the ocean compared to the 200 billion hours people spend watching TV annually.

This is according to Clay Shirky in Cognitive Surplus. He says since the 1940s, in our free time, we’ve been steadily moving from a consuming posture to a creating (and sharing) one.

I was at a comedian’s conference (I know!) once, and a promoter described a new act whose work ethic he liked (me too!). This new comedian had a day job. On the ride to and and from work (I’m guessing 30 minutes each way), this person made it their mission to write ten jokes. That’s do-able. Five on the way in, five on the way out.

Fifty jokes a week, two hundred jokes a month. An hour a day. Your leisure time is still your own when you walk through the door.

In the old days, you could write all you want, but you’d still have to wait for a gig somewhere to see what flew. Now there’s Twitter and a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t know about (I’m assuming!).

Two hundred jokes a month. Tweet your best, what, twenty? Fifty? Do the lot! It’s your life. You can interact with an audience and learn something.

Baby steps. See what works. Five jokes on the way in, five on the way out.

Also, a great thing about the internet: If you do something a bit rubbish, no-one looks. No-one’s got the time. There’s 200 billion hours of telly to catch up on!

*That’s what it took to build Wikipedia to its 2009 extent.

Standard