Seth Godin has a great 14 page pdf on ChangeThis titled Brainwashed.
What brainwashing does he speak of?
..to teach you that you’re average. That compliant work is the best way to a reliable living. That creating average stuff for average people again and again is a safe and easy way to get what you want
Believe you me, no one understands and relates to this statement more than someone who grew up in the Singaporean education system. The system itself is great (I think I benefited from a stressful education) but the mentality of playing it safe is overwhelming.
And so generations of students turned into generations of cogs… We were brainwashed into fitting in, and then discovered that the economy wanted people who stood out instead
Too true isn’t it? That’s why the idea of personal branding resonates so much with Generation Y. We’re not here to fit into pigeon-holed roles. We love dealing with other people who stand out instead of people who blend into the background. It’s a delight to meet someone passionate about their beliefs, even if you don’t share them.
You were being trained to be a compliant cog, someone who could mindlessly follow instructions as opposed to seeking out innovation and surprise
Yes we were. No one is asking anyone to disregard instructions, but it doesn’t mean we should follow them blindly. Just because the your boss receives something that is different from her point of view, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
The rest of the article is really good, and provides actionable tips on reinventing yourself, mostly using social media. Read it. And perhaps more importantly, put it into action. I know it’s something I’m going to be referring to every three months or so just to remind me that I shouldn’t be a cog in the machine.
At this point I want to congratulate my friend Ping from Pixel Pastry who arguably did not get brainwashed and has been unveiled as junior art director at Tribal DDB at the ripe old age of 23. Congrats!
Pat has a great post with the same title: how to be a social media junkie and keep your job over on Blankanvas and it inspired me to make a post of my own, though I certainly don’t mean to compare my fresh 3-month agency life with her career!
It took me awhile to figure out that I although my work and personal life crisscross in that the subject matter happens to be the same, there would be no way to manage this on a long term basis unless I turned it into a well-oiled machine, and I finally feel like I have that routine nailed down enough to get close to full productivity at the office.
First, a little bit of what I do. I work in a 100% digital ad agency so thankfully all my client work is online. While I have my fair share as billable hours, as the resident “social media guy” (not guru) in the team, I maintain all of BLUE’s social media presence from the BLUE blog to our twitter account to delicious, stumble upon, Facebook and the like. As with anything, maintaining these accounts and doing my billable work takes time, so this is how my typical day goes:
0745: get up, check my own Gmail for important mails I need to take note of, have a once-over my RSS feed and check in on Facebook.
0900 (ish): reach the office, clear my work email and work Gmail. This includes looking for comments on the BLUE blog, seeing who’s followed us on Twitter, approving friend requests on Facebook and anything else that might have come through those channels.
0945: check in on BLUE’s Twitter account to look for anything interesting, mentions, DMs or tweets worth re-tweeting. I make it a point to try to follow 3-5 new people daily just to expand our horizons. We deal in everything digital so everyone from design to mobile people to SEO/SEM to social media to even mainstream marketing people are all “fair game”.
1010: next I peer into my rss feed on Outlook (which is separate from my personal Google Reader feed) to look for stuff that’s relevant to the team and stuff that will help with thought leadership, case studies and the like. Where applicable I forward them to the team or bookmark them on delicious, stumble upon etc. I also make a quick scan of oursignal.com just to see what else people find interesting.
By the time all this is done it’s anywhere between 1030 to 11am and I move on to whatever tasks I have for the day. This is where it enters “anything goes” territory and things are a little flexible, but I always feel like I cleared an important part of my routine by now. And in fact given the line of work I’m in, that’s about all the routine I can expect. There was one week where I had more work than normal to do and I completely didn’t engage in this routine for a good four days. It took me a long while to dig myself out of that black hole.
As much as starting the day off is important, I like to end it with some structure too. There’s a great post on Webworker Daily called firewall your time and I try to dedicate half an hour starting at around 545 to do certain tasks:
Achieve inbox zero (both work and Gmail) (I sometimes fail this step)
Check ‘later’ email folder for actionable items
Save sent emails worth saving
Check outlook calendar and Google Calendar for appointments/events tomorrow that I might have to prepare for
Write todo list for next day
Review any stuff I wrote down on paper today
Check check my tickler notes for today and tomorrow to see if there’s anything outstanding for today I need to do, or take note of for tomorrow
Clear physical inbox (things that I have to process once goes in here: paper to recycle, trash to throw, stuff to bring home. So I don’t shuttle back and forth)
Fill up my timesheet (daily is a must)
Decide what to do when home, enter that into my tickler file
Clear what I can from my Outlook RSS feeds
Clear my desktop – limited to what I’m working on tomorrow and archiving the rest. (I usually fail this step)
After work, I clear stuff I’ve written down on my tickler file and generally do my own thing (game, catch a movie, have dinner etc) but more often than not stuff I read online is work related, so I email that to myself and make a note of what action I should take the next day.
So that’s what I do to keep myself same, get my social media ‘fix’ and keep my job (so far) all at the same time. How about you?
ps: Interestingly enough, almost exactly a year ago Pat and I did a similar ‘day in the life’ post talking about the brands we would come into contact with and use throughout the day. Read about her brand timeline and mine if you’re so inclined. (Caveat: I was in Canada at the time of that post, so Canadian brands will probably be overly represented)
As I connect with friends who are new entrants to the workforce, I find that an increasing number of them come back feeling work should be “more than this” and feeling anywhere between annoyed to outright fed up with processes that should have been extinct right around the time of the dinosaurs.
I look at these friends and see people who were student leaders in school, excellent team mates who I’ve worked well with at one point or another and real go-getters, so why the seeming disconnect?
Perhaps we’ve been trained to think, to learn how to be decision makers and knowledge workers. But when we question processes/actions that could be done in cheaper, faster or smarter ways, they’re thrown under the “we’ve always done it this way” bus.
We seem used to solving problems within days when we could make the decisions, but now problems could take months to solve, new initiatives months to be approved, depending on how many hoops your corporation makes you jump through.
In a world where you can reach anyone via LinkedIn and we’re taught to connect to CEOs and build those relationships, these hoops seem counter-intuitive.
It seems Generation Y feels like they graduate from school and get hired by employers who do not know what to do with us and instead slap on “tried and tested” methods of management and work processes that bury Gen Y with what they perceive (rightly or wrongly) to be meaningless work, instead of harnessing the crazy amount of energy they possess and unleash it on conquering the world (or some similar corporate goal). Are the unique talents really being maximised? Or are they being utilised the way they always have been utilised before?
It seems they graduate and look at people in the company who have worked for a few years and are settling into “just get by” mode, and can see themselves transforming into those drones in a few years.
Can we change a world that is resistant to change?
Is this the “sense of entitlement” that people claim Generation Y have? Or is it a sign that the workforce is fundamentally broken and needs to be fixed?
The reason is simple: it comes down to demographics.
Last week I was casually looking at the profiles of people who joined Facebook while they were in school, and those who joined Facebook while they were already in the workforce, and one main difference struck me. Keep in mind that this is by no means a scientific method of “research” but casual observation. Remember that Facebook was started out as a social network for college students to share stuff like timetables, and for those of us who started it while in school, it may well have been used for those purposes and connecting with people in the same classes.
The Big Observation
I realise the people who were in school/are currently in school, tend to have much more friends on Facebook than those who were part of the workforce when Facebook appeared. I’m not sure if this is surprising to anyone, but to me, while the number of friends in itself doesn’t necessary say anything explicitly, it does suggest a number of implications:
1) We’re used to this mode of communication
Some days I realise I don’t have someone’s phone number with me, but we’re friends on Facebook. So I whip out my iPhone, log into the Facebook mobile application and I can send them a message and expect a reply back pretty quickly. And not all messages are created equal. The tone and context of a Facebook message is different from that of an SMS or an email, bringing a certain level of flexibility to communications. I think Gen Y will learn to leverage this mode of communication more and more in the future.
2) We’re used to being searched
We know that employers and colleagues screen us on Facebook. We know how to blend our personal and online profiles to get across who we really are on our Facebook profiles. This may differ from people who aren’t used to sharing information about themselves or pictures of their family. I think this enhances our ability to connect and build relationships and networks.
3) We’re used to adding “friends”.
It’s not at all uncommon to attend an event one night and be tagged in a Facebook photo the next day and become friends soon after. The old definition of “friend” becomes looser all the time and these loose links may actually turn out to be the most valuable of all, so there’s a lower barrier to adding these aquaintances. (Caveat: it doesn’t work when you’re obviously a pushy marketer out to collect friends rather than build relationships)
In addition to these three points, obviously with time, more people we know will get on Facebook from friends to family to co-workers to business partners to casual connections online, and that will only enhance the network effect and that will be a big factor in keeping Facebook “sticky” because people simply won’t switch to another social networking site unless most of their network does too. And when “most of their network” translates to easily 500 friends, it’s no easy task to induce a switch.
So why two years?
Simple, that’s the time it would have taken for all the people who joined Facebook in the first few years of its’ existence, to have graduated out of school and enter the workforce and start using it as a real social connector and virtual rolodex. I’m pretty sure this will lead to reversals of decisions to unblock Facebook and perhaps really solidify the wave for social media marketing via social networking channels by people who understand them the most.
This of course is my possibly skewed view. What do you think? Do we use Facebook any differently than people even slightly older than us? Is there a greater propensity for us to connect or is it a level playing field? The comments are yours.
I really wanted to write this up over the weekend, but I got hit by a flu bug (and fever) and was literally knocked out all weekend, so better late than never.
Challenging
Week One at Blue has been really challenging, but fulfilling at the same time. As much as I know I can bring some knowledge to the front end of things, the extent to which Blue has the back end of things nailed down really, really blew me away. These are the hardcore people who will slice and dice your email database, implement a targeted (not shotgun) approach to executing a campaign, calculate the predicted results to +/- two standard deviations, prove it makes financial sense across the board, and go right ahead to do just that. From day one I’ve really felt that what I know is like 2% compared to what my colleagues know.
Accountability
It shouldn’t be surprising to me that this is a big deal at Blue. After all, their tagline is “the measurable marketing company”. But on the second day I was told accountability and results are “something we hold close to our soul”, and I’m reminded about that every day. (By the way, that would make a great Blue t-shirt). The whole kumbayah soft approach “engage customers” and all that is thrown out of the window and I am really having to dig deep to find powerful, compelling and trackable ideas that come from well-regarded sources.
Data data and more data
On Friday I was introduced to the “listening” tool we use at Blue and it took me close to six hours to get familiar with the terms, what they do, what I should look for, the story it tells and how it makes a difference to our clients. The sheer power behind that tool and how we use it is just staggering. I’ve always kind of flipped through Avinash Kaushik’s blog for stuff on analytics, but I’ve never read them word for word. Needless to say, I am now, for every single post. (And his posts are long).
One thing I’m sure of is that my decision to get into digital or social media over a year ago was the right one. There is no way I would have ever been picked for this job if I graduated from school with what we’re being taught in marketing classes these days. Understanding how social technologies empower marketing and conversations and conceptual understanding of how the back end stuff like SEO and optimisation has really saved me a lot of pain. And you know people ask me all the time why I never monetised Social Media Breakfast, the answer is plain as day: It created a platform for me (and anyone interested) to meet industry practicioners who were dealing with this stuff every single day. Many of whom I respect and are happy to call friends. I don’t think that would have happened if I made them pay $20 a session. Hell, I couldn’t buy the experience and exposure I got from it if I tried.
Late upload (all my fault) but here is the 6th episode of The GennY Podcast once again with Dorothy and myself talking about things that that happened at Ad:Tech 2009, and our observations.
The show notes:
00:00 – Starting off “live” from Ad:Tech
00:24 – A slight comparison of Ad:Tech 2008 and Ad:Tech 2009 and trends we’ve noticed
00:51 – First trend: The audience still seems to be semi to largely clueless!
01:51 – Is there a trend of inertia of companies not wanting to get their feet wet?
02:52 – Second trend: The idea of strategy vs tools. Shouldn’t this be common sense?
03:20 – There really needs to be a bigger strategy than “collecting followers”
03:32 – Should marketing move up from the tactical level to the strategic level?
04:52 – There should be a budget shift from expensive TVCs that no one is watching, especially when numerous presentations show data that TV isn’t as powerful as it used to be
05:45 – If your digital initiatives aren’t working for you, prove that your traditional media initiatives are
06:36 – Maybe the truth hurts? The blind faith of buying an ad makes you feel better?
07:22 – So how do you deal with intangibles? Maybe you can’t have it both ways?
07:49 – Maybe online interactions have a different angle. Maybe it’s not about sales. Maybe it can be used for feedback?
08:12 – Are advertisers just conning themselves? What does 4.5 million eyeballs even mean?
09:00 – Dorothy sighs in utter exasperation. You’re doing this to her advertisers! You!
09:08 – Maybe we’re just in a stage where we don’t know what the different numbers mean
10:50 – How is employing one person to take care of your social media presence a more expensive investment than producing and buying a TV ad?
11:08 – In the future, advertising should be come “invisible” and woven in
11:52 – There seems to be a universal Generation Y culture
13:27 – Maybe they just want to reach more people, but as Seth Godin says, the world has shifted from the “how many” to the “who”
14:32 – Hopefully we’ll have the rest of the crew back soon and we’re trying to make this regular!
Ogilvy’s Digital Influence team held another Open Room, titled “Journalism’s from Mars, Social Media’s from Venus” and after tonight, I think it’s clear that the problem they have is the problem everyone (businesses, schools, non-profits, the music industry, etc) is having. They were sitting on a model that was working for the last 50 or so years, have been blind-sided by the sudden tidal wave of social media and not only are they not scrambling to catch up, but they’re actually holding on to the old world for all that it’s worth.
As with panels, I was fully prepared for some of the audience to be un-accepting of some young (and even worse, enemployed) punk telling them what the world is like. And it was no different this time, which is fine with me, it makes life exciting! How awfully boring would it be if everyone just nodded their heads and agreed.
I think it was a really interesting discussion. There was as much uncommon ground as there was common, and it’s painfully obvious both sides have to learn from each other. Monetisation is not a dirty word, but neither is trusting a fellow blogger. I think we have to move away from our normal worldviews that content creating is done for passion (for bloggers) or that the man on the street (or the Tweeter on Tweetdeck) is less reliable and/or credible than the journalist.
Thinking about “journalism” from the point of breaking news and real good opinion pieces is one thing. But I think we need to think about where the money comes from. Thinking about subscription models and what not is fine (even though they won’t work), but as Thomas Crampton brought up, mainstream media has enjoyed the monopoly on reaching people and advertising for a very long time, and companies are just beginning to realise that they can bypass the “middleman” entirely, thus crippling the revenue model. Will it provide them the reach? Probably not. Will it provide them the influence? Barack Obama’s YouTube channel suggests yes (yes yes I know it worked in tandem with traditional media).
As a closing comment: someone said that old habits die hard, referring to the staying power of traditional media and being used to opening that Sunday edition of the paper over a slow and leisurely breakfast. Here’s a thought: my “old” habits from the old world started changing by the time I was thirteen, and many were gone by the time I was seventeen. Radio, once a nightly listen for the dedication show, is an afterthought, so are magazines. TV serves my purposes when I want it to, newspapers have flown out of the window, music exists in the form of mp3s, not cds. The only “old world” habit I maintain is the reading of books.
My point is this: as much as old habits die hard, to the new generation, new habits form at an alarming speed that the world has never seen before. When, if ever, has a generation been influenced so quickly and successively like from the transition to Friendster to Facebook? That’s not just the speed of platform change, but the speed of diffusion from half a world away. When and how fast did we take up texting to replace calling? The speed of change is crazy. Geographical boundaries barely exist anymore. And I would ask people who believe in the “old habits” to take a look at their children, their nephews, their nieces or anyone under 20 and tell me how many of their “old habits” they see replicated in them, and ask how different the world will be in five or ten years, and if now’s the time to think about that change, or cling on to “old habits”.
So Dorothy and I were speaking at Ad:Tech Asia yesterday at a youth panel, and there was much discussion at the panel, on Twitter and online about what was said. We decided a quick episode of GennY would be a great way to talk about our thoughts after the panel. You can check out this blog post with lots of details with what was said at the panel.
The show notes
00:00 – Daryl and Dorothy start us off, this is focused on the fallout after the Ad:Tech youth panel, 2009
00:27 – First point: Why this obssession with the distinction between “new” and “traditional” media?
01:55 – Daryl mentions that the tools are all the same and references Brian’s (@litford)’s comments in GennY #4 about the same tools having different usages, with different results. (GennY Podcast episode 004 – 22:34)
02:15 – Dorothy mentions that consistency across the different platforms is the key
02:55 – Is it about distinguishing the differences between them, or about how they can work together?
03:11 – Who do “influencers” really have to be?
05:34 – Down with “faceless” corporations on social media channels!! It’s impersonal and we can’t relate
06:55 – How about spokespeople from companies being the “faces” online?
07:44 – There are “stages” and “levels” in social media and the difficulty ramps up at each stage
08:17 – Perhaps co-ownership is the way to go. As long as there is someone available to listen
09:35 – Final point: Are youth really that different?
10:00 – Do older generations remember banner ads or TV ads?
10:18 – Marketers don’t like to hear that Gen Y doesn’t want to hear from “faceless” corporations, but isn’t it the same as receiving a telemarketer phone call or junk mail asking to sign up for a new credit card?
10:53 – Do the older generations go on websites and think “Wow this banner ad rocks I want to click on it”? Because if they don’t, why do they think we will?
11:10 – At the end of the day, would you be interested/excited about the ad if you were a consumer?
11:40 – Why would you do selective focus groups who may not even be your target group, when you could do it online with your fans and get fast feedback?
00:00 – Yin starts us off – introductions all round
00:36 – The tumbleweed crosses the alamo
01:17 – What do we expect of brands if they are involved in social media?
01:28 – Brian’s expectations are low, he just wants someone to talk to him
03:06 – If brands decide to be online, then they owe it to the customer to interact with them
04:10 – The minimum expectation is at least and acknowledgement or a reply, even if the concern or question isn’t immediately answered.
05:23 – Maybe sometimes brands shouldn’t be on social media?
06:12 – Yin suggests there’s a difference between big brands and smaller brands in terms of the scale of reaching out and interacting with customers
07:01 – Yinqi says with the resources that big brands have, she feels they should experiment more
07:29 – Brian mentions the flip side, which is that big brands have more to lose in terms of reputation online, despite the relative ease to get involved
09:17 – Brian clanks his beer bottle against the table leg for effect, before saying that brands don’t own brands, customers own brands
10:53 – Daryl brings up the local example of Starhub on Twitter and whether it opens up the opportunity to solve minor issues
11:54 – Brian brings up the reverse of that to announce anticipation of minor issues in advance so that at least consumers know
13:08 – Kris says one to one relationships aren’t always possible, especially with many consumers
16:13 – The issue really is about being painfully aware that your actions online (if you choose to be online) is broadcast to everyone
16:54 – The customer is now empowered to keep brands in check
20:59 – Yin wonders why brands still repeat mistakes, despite many opportunities for them to learn
22:04 – The tools are of equal access to everyone, it’s how your choose to wield the tools
22:24 – Brian says “nerfed”
22:56 – Daryl has the expectation (realistic or not) that brands should know the general “rules” of the platform they choose to engage consumers in
23:58 – What about companes’ expectations of consumers?
26:41 – Maybe companies need to make it clear what to expect from their online engagements
27:00 – Brian tells his Zappos story as an example of positive engagement
29:20 – Yin calls for feedback and questions and more interaction!
If you’d like us to talk about anything and hear Gen Y’s perspective, leave a comment and we’ll definitely record it if it’s within our collective sphere of knowledge.
I’m going to be at the Youth Connect! Conference on the 18th of May as part of a youth panel called “Youth Speak! – What makes Youth Tick?” that aims to “reveal what shapes their lifestyle, spending habits, what’s in & what’s not”.
So I have two questions:
1) To the organisations: What would you want to know?
and
2) To fellow youth, here’s a visual from the conference pamphlet:
Cool vs Socially Conscious
I know what’s my answer, but I’d love to hear from you! The comments are yours.
