Archive for posts i’ve written

publish early, publish often

19 Oct, 2011 • posts i've written • No comments

Last week, friend and past-conspirator Jamie Wilkinson stopped by the office to talk about himself and what he’s learned trying to ignite culture on the web. It’s a long video but it’s definitely worth watching in full.

I mean, the dude won an Emmy. So. Yeah.

Tomorrow (that’s Thursday) we’ll also have Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic, talking to us about what the world might look like in 2020. Tune in tomorrow at 4pm PST for that.

holy cow of the day

18 Oct, 2011 • posts i've written • 1 comment

I want one for Christmas.

More on Quantum Locking over at io9.

what complexity are you mirroring?

12 Oct, 2011 • posts i've written • 1 comment

Structurally, agencies and their clients look quite a bit alike. We also work quite a bit like each other. This is because we evolved together. As our client’s structure changed, we adapted to support them. We mirrored their complexity. Now we’re practically indiscernable from one another.

And that’s good and bad. We’re familiar to our clients, how we work doesn’t shock them, and our billing department works pretty well with theirs. But we’re just as slow as they are. Just as maladaptive. We can submit an invoice and they can process it. But can we lead them into the future? Can we improve their business models?

Agencies also evolved to support changing mediums. Our internal structure mimics the diversity of surfaces we slap our work on. Each one of those surfaces have nuances that we need to know, so we’ve locked ourselves into silos. Now, however, the game isn’t how well you can design a single ad, but how a myriad of executions (some ads, some experiences, some inventions) can work together to affect busy, diverse, complex-in-their-own-right human beings.

Now, many of our adaptations are working against us. What was once an asset is now a liability. Gills have little use on dry land.

It’s time to question our adaptations. It’s time to question what complexity we mirror and what complexity we ignore. Perhaps the more valuable adaptation isn’t that we look like our clients, but that we can solve their emerging problems.

r.i.p. steve

05 Oct, 2011 • posts i've written • No comments

My first computer was an Apple IIe. I fell in love at first sight.

The heroes you pick say more about you than them. A part of me doesn’t feel diminished right now, it feels awoken.

If you didn’t study the man before his death, you’re a fool not to now.

seeking invention strategists at heart

22 Sep, 2011 • posts i've written • 8 comments

I’m 4 weeks in now to my new job at Deutsch in Los Angeles as Invention Strategist, and while the role is fluid, I’m getting a better sense each day how it stacks up. More importantly, to you, is that we’re looking to hire people to experiment with this new role – working with me.

I come from a non-traditional background. I’ve worked in digital studios, content companies, a strategy shop, and a couple start-ups. I’ve been a programmer, a designer, a writer, a project manager, and strategist. What free time I have is spent deep diving into almost-random subject matter. I have a sick need to abuse myself of ignorance – and there’s so much I don’t know. When I was looking for a gig, it was hard to find a role that wasn’t too narrow, or too rigid.

So it makes sense that my role here is in a bit of a no-man’s land bridging strategy and creative. I think Winston did a great job explaining why Invention Strategy matters, I would just add that the purpose of the role is to bring ideas and prototypes to the client that don’t fit in the comfortable mold of ad deliverables that they’re used to.

We want to build a team that creates products. Modern products. Products that inspire people to share them, to talk about them, and to evangelize them. We want to find people that can invent those products, services, and platforms. We’re looking for people who think in systems, too, who see business models in systems, and propose advances that recognize and take advantage of systems and ecosystems. Together with the larger organization, we want a team that helps expand the definition of what an integrated agency can do – a team that can work with the talented storytellers, strategists, and developers already in-house to create remarkable pieces of communication and remarkable products to be communicated.

We’re looking to build a small nimble team that can extend itself across the organization, to sense what’s going on, and to bring valuable ideas and advisement where they’re needed most. I, personally, want to build a team of people smarter than myself, and I want to work closely with those people so we can make each other smarter. We want to find those individuals that shudder at the restrictive job descriptions in most agencies. The people who are routinely told, “You’re smart, but we don’t know what to do with you.” We want to build our own island of misfit toys, with the mission to pursue ideas that impact our client’s business. The kind of people that have a rabid sense of curiosity and a productive frustration that leads them to want to make things better. We also prefer to work with nice people. Egos need not apply.

If you’re interested, please send a cover letter and a resume to bud.caddell [at] deutschinc [dot] com.

Extra points: help me understand where you fit in these spectrums. No one maxes out all quadrants, we are all stronger in some areas and weaker in others, but give me concrete examples of when you’ve thought and when you’ve helped build in each area.

choose reality

12 Sep, 2011 • posts i've written • No comments

At 7pm CT this Wednesday, a global, live-streamed, event to address the reality of the climate crisis will begin. In all, 24 presenters in 24 timezones in 13 languages will discuss the severity of the threat and its regional impact – for 24 hour straight hours.

Full disclosure – I was incredibly humbled to put in a small amount of thinking on behalf of this organization and the cause. I truly believe that the challenges of the 21st century will be made insurmountable if we continue to deny our impact to this planet. This is a systemic problem – one if left unchecked threatens to disrupt more than just the weather. This event is the beginning of a much longer campaign to confront the climate crisis and to take the powerful forces of denial head-on.

We need your help to spread the word and to take action. What can change in a day? Everything. If you take action.

In less than 2 minutes you can help:

Visit ClimateRealityProject.org for more information. Please do take a moment to help.

what if i said …

02 Sep, 2011 • posts i've written • 4 comments

that there is someone listening in on your online conversations and that someone is passing public judgement?

And what if I also said that you are powerless to have that judgement taken down?

Well, it’s happening.

Join our Facebook Page if you think something should be done.

we’re stranded thanks to tire kingdom

10 Aug, 2011 • posts i've written • 4 comments

Update – Aug 14, 8pm PST – We made it to LA! And I start said-awesome job tomorrow morning. I’ve still yet to hear back from Tire Kingdom’s insurance group, so I won’t know how this will be resolved for some time. But I just want to publicly thank Blake at BP Auto in Marfa, TX for helping me out – he’s the sole reason we made it here.

Update – Aug 11, 6pm CST – after an outpouring of tweets from people like you, Tire Kingdom reached out via Twitter (success!) and put me in touch with their head of customer service. Unfortunately, there is simply nothing they can do for me while I’m here in Marfa, their Big O Tires anywhere around me don’t do engine work (again, that Nationwide Warranty isn’t so nationwide). So, sadly, we have to go with the crazy glue option (see last paragraph). Hopefully we’ll make it to LA on a band-aided engine. The Tire Kingdom people have so far been kind and understanding of what a huge headache this is for the three of us and have offerred to cover our extra hotel stay and if we do get stranded again (please god no) they have promised to pay for a tow and a rental car. When it comes to taking responsibility for their mistake … that’s yet to be seen. My mechanic here in Marfa said it was clear to him that the head gasket work was not done properly at all and he has promised to do whatever is necessary to support me if Tire Kingdom denies the error. Actually, the owner (I assume she’s the owner) of the original TK shop gave me a far-too-late call this afternoon and when I told her what my mechanic found, she curiously said, “Why would you trust what he has to say?” Come to think of it, when I actually got my car back from her shop in Florida she also said, “I’m so glad to have your car out of my shop,” which was kind of a rude and foreboding thing to say. But – I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, as of now, that they’ll make this right once I get the car into their shop and their insurance adjusters can see the clear and obvious rush job which has all but destroyed the engine of my car. We’ll head out of Marfa (fingers crossed) some time midday tomorrow, headed for Phoenix. Wish us luck. Thanks again to everybody that made noise on my behalf, really, that was amazing.

The original post …

If you’re short on time but long on caring, do me a favor and please send this post to Tire Kingdom via Twitter or Facebook.

Some things I’ve learned in the last couple of days …

  • When a customer service rep promises to ‘escalate’ your issue, they are probably just trying to get you off the phone
  • Apparently you can say you have a ‘Nationwide Warranty’ on parts and labor even though your stores in half the country aren’t able to honor it
  • Sitting in an overheating car, when it’s 105 degrees outside, with your girlfriend in the front seat, and your dog panting in the backseat is incredibly stressful and really kind of awful

I should back up. I don’t like to write posts like this, to use my blog to whine about a personal issue, and to admonish a company publicly. In fact, I’ve never used my blog like this before. But I’m out of options and my patience dried up in the West Texas heatwave.

This week I am supposed to be driving across the country to my new home in Los Angeles and I am supposed to start an awesome new job on Monday. But right now, that timeline, and my wallet, are in jeopardy. And Tire Kingdom, a nationwide chain with affiliate brands such as National Tire and Battery (NTB), Big O Tires, and Merchant’s Tire and Auto Centers, bears some responsibility for our stranding. I’ve tried talking to them about this, but so far I’ve been ‘escalated’ right off the phone.

Last Tuesday, my car began overheating and I found myself a block from a Tire Kingdom in Jacksonville, Florida. They told me that I had blown a head gasket and charged me $1700 to fix it (along with installing a new thermostat and water pump). I told them about my upcoming road trip and asked them to do whatever was necessary to ensure we made it to our new home safely. I then picked the car up on Friday, drove it home, and it overheated again. The next day I took the car back to the station but couldn’t replicate the problem. The tech drove the car for 10 minutes and said it was probably just an air bubble. They assured me that if I had any problems that the service came with a nationwide, 12 month warranty, and that they had locations all across the country along I-10. I topped off the radiator fluid just for safe measure and we left for LA.

So what happened? Well half-way through our trip, the car overheated again because my radiator was bone dry and my engine oil was full of radiator fluid. In other words, the work performed didn’t work and we were stranded.

First, I looked up the nearest Tire Kingdom location – which happens to be a Big O Tires in New Mexico. To my shock, they don’t do engine work and therefore can’t honor my warranty. And neither can the dozen or so other locations I called that are within 300 miles west of our current location. In fact, an owner of a Big O Tires informed me that none of the locations he knew of did engine work, and Big O is the only affiliate in the western half of the country. The only way to take the car to one of their technicians is to drive 405 miles back to San Antonio, which at that distance we could easily do even more damage to the engine.

I called the original shop that did the work, to ask them what to do, and the technician there said off-handedly that he thought (at the time he did the work) that the problem was deeper in the engine block. So why didn’t he fix what he thought to be the real problem when I brought the car in? And when I came back because it overheated again, why did he forget to mention this? Knowing that I was about to drive my girlfriend and our dog (and everything we own) 2400 miles across the country, through a heat wave, why did he let us go without being forthcoming? Whatever his reason for holding back, because he chose not to repair my car correctly, or investigate what he considered to be the underlying problem, the engine has now been irreparably damaged.

I then called the parent company’s 1-800 number this morning, hoping to be helped in some way at all, and instead my ‘issue’ was ‘escalated’ to a district manager and I spent the day waiting to be called back. As the day wore on, and it became clear that no one was interested in the urgency of our problem, we had to extend our hotel stay here and push back our reservation we had scheduled in Phoenix for tomorrow night.

Right now, our choices are literally between slim and none. A mechanic down the street from our hotel said that the only way we’ll even have a shot to make it to LA by the end of the weekend is to band-aid the problem by pouring a kind of crazy glue into the engine which has an 80% chance of sealing whatever cracks are there (he called this the ‘really bad but only option’). This will set us back another $200 for the repair and 2 more days we’ll have to wait and pay for hotel rooms. The money is a pain and having to explain this to a new employer is annoying, but the stress of fighting an overheating car in this heat mixed with the complete lack of help from Tire Kingdom is what is most unbearable.

In a fair world, in my opinion at least, Tire Kingdom should refund us for the original work, and pay for the engine to be repaired (and not just band-aided). I’d also appreciate if they could compensate us for the extra hotel stay. If they can’t actually stand behind their nationwide warranty which they touted when I came in for the work, they can at least ensure that someone fixes my car the right way.

So, as of now, this post has to end on a bit of a cliffhanger. Britt, Indy, and I are sitting in our hotel room stressing over what to do next and how to cross the last thousand miles – waiting for Tire Kingdom to respond.

If you’ve endured this complaint and want to help, please send this post to Tire Kingdom via Twitter or Facebook.

meeps: rediscovering the power of the early web

02 Aug, 2011 • posts i've written • No comments

Over the last week, new mobile social start-up meeps has been featured by the Washington Post, PSFK, and Mashable as a participant in Common’s upcoming Pitch event. I am incredibly honored to be advising meeps and its co-founder, Mat Ranauro, and I thought it would be good if people actually got to know a little more about the start-up and its fearless leader.

We sat down over IM and hashed through the following Q&A, touching on topics like anonymity, the early web, and t-shirt cannons. Enjoy and do sign-up for the beta launch which is coming very soon. I’m the Q, he’s the A.

Q – So, first things first, Mat, what is meeps and who is it made for?
A – meeps is an application that connects people with common interests. It’s meant for anyone – moms who want to discuss gardening to kids looking for a party to check out.

Q – Give me a use case for it, what am I doing, where am I, and what do I get out of the experience?
A – Sure, say you’re at a CU football game and you’re having a conversation with people at the game but also people you know around the globe – using meeps. And they actually want to hear about it. You’re connecting places, people and shared interests. Rather than only watching what friends post, you can filter your interests through meeps. The beauty, we think, of meeps is the ability for it to transform into whatever you want, it’s a very organic network experience.

Q – How is this different than existing apps like GroupMe?
A – GroupMe is a group texting application and its focused on your existing friendships and connections. meeps is more expansive than that, here your social graph is more fluid and is determined by your interests at the moment. We also see group texting as a feature, not a product in and of itself.

Q – So, in an overly simple description, meeps is what I go to instead of Facebook and Twitter where my ranting about a particular thing I’m enjoying in the moment is connected to a community of people that care about that thing, instead of all my friends who may or may not care that I’m at a CU game?
A – That could be a use case, but you could come to meeps if you want to chat with, lets say gardeners, and discuss how to care for a certain plant type, which is something your current social graph online may or may not be able to help you with.


The dude, the founder, Mr. Mat Ranauro

Q – Do you see meeps as the next incarnation of the web forum?
A – In some sense, yeah, it’s really forum 2.0 but extremely focused on mobile and how that experience lives and breaths in the physical world instead of only in a web browser.

Q – When I think about forums, I see mostly dead technology (or technology that stopped evolving after 1999), but there are a few standout forums that are massive backbones to the web – such as Metafilter and 4chan – what do you think they’ve done well and has meeps learned from them?
A – 4chan is such a fascinating community. They’ve captured the essence of the real-time and frenetic experience. You’re living in the moment and you quickly engage with what interests you. But 4chan has a very distinct personality – it’s not for everyone. meeps wants to be broader, obviously, but the experience 4chan creates, the real-time fidelity, is something that is core to meeps.

Q – I can see some overlap, in that Meeps is a sort of a free for all, talk about anything experience. What’s your stance on anonymity for the community? How will you curb the trolls?
A – Anonymity can create a more truthful response, but it requires some guidelines to be in place to create accountability for your actions – and it’s something I think we’ve got an interesting solve for. We want people to be able to enjoy meeps quickly and pretty painlessly, but we do want to create functionality that helps the community police itself.

Q – Why do you think recent mobile social network apps like Path and Color haven’t been nearly as successful in attracting users as they have been in garnering press and funding?
A – They’re simply not solving real problems.
Q – And what does meeps solve?
A – Lowering the signal to noise ratio while enabling discovery. Mobile is a vehicle for discovering the world around us and what we’re building will enable discovery in an entirely new way while helping you organize your social interactions.

Q – In some ways this really could explode out who you are connected to in the world?
A – Absolutely. It’s something the early web did well. You were connecting to people anywhere based on interests (think game forums, car forums, chat rooms based on city/state) but with social networks that changed, and i don’t believe for the best. Social networks like Facebook connect you to who you know, which obviously has value, but you’re missing out on others who share a common interest, which could be an extremely powerful and rewarding experience. The internet is going to change massively over the next decade, real-time connections to people, places, interests – whatever – is the next frontier and products like Foursquare are scratching the surface.

Q – So, you’re headed to Common’s first Pitch event, how do you plan to woo Alex Bogusky and co.?
A – By telling a great story with our product.
Q – No fireworks or showering of pennies?
A – OK, maybe a tee shirt cannon filled with fireworks… maybe, but we’ll need to get the fire marshall to clear that first.

Q – So, what can interested people do now, and how long do they have to wait till meeps is at their fingertips?
A – You can sign up on meeps.com for an invite. We have a couple private beta’s going on and will be inviting more people over the next couple months. We’re shooting to have meeps available to the public soon.

Thanks to Mat for the quick chat! If you have any questions about meeps or anything we discussed, leave it in the comments and Mat will hop in and respond (or I’ll pester him to).

hacking brands

24 Jun, 2011 • posts i've written • 3 comments

Is anyone else fascinated with how distributed groups like Anonymous and Lulzsec (and even al-Qaeda) are developing, expressing, and using the idea of a brand?

It’s interesting to me how each have the external traits of a brand – replete with static things like logos and tones of voice – yet the population, attitudes, and beliefs of the group are in a constant state of flux.

This is a half-formed thought, or really question.

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