Crowd Source This

Sam Adams wants the crowd to help them make a beer.

But here's the thing: People are idiots.

A smart person avoid crowds and crowd logic.
Take the path less traveled.
Discover a new way. A better way.
Does it different. On their own. Or with a few handpicked smart people to guide them.
And challenge them.

You want to make a good new beer?
Partner with another brewer.
Or a physicist.
Or a chef.
Or a bicycle technician.
Not a crowd.

The crowd is lowest common denominator.
The crowd is too many chefs in the fucking kitchen.
A crowd is a mob.
A crowd is a focus group.

Crowds make terrible decisions:
Like Facebook.
And book burning.
And Hollister.

You want a brilliant idea?
Leave it to a brilliant person.

You want a stupid idea? Ask a crowd.

How full is your bike?

Photograph one of a series by Alain Delorme

I saw this photograph, and loved it right away.

Beyond the spectacular palette and the riveting subject matter, I immediately thought of the dilemma we sometimes face of working on a lot of jobs at once. If you step back and look at the load, you shake your head and you say "impossible". But if you are riding the bike as someone carefully balances one more, two more, five more projects on top, you somehow find a way to balance them. You make time. You compensate. And as long as you keep moving, you almost don't notice.

Of course stopping and starting become the issue. And as with any delivery job, stopping and starting are a serious part of the deal. Inertia sort of plays against you -- you'd rather hold onto the job then stop long enough to deliver it properly. Just one more meeting. just one more week to really finish it properly.

You're not nearly as nimble -- when a truck blows by, when an innocent pedestrian steps in front of you, or in a narrow alley strewn with trash, vermin and the occasional drunk. Right? Welcome to advertising! You'll probably crash. You'll likely drop jobs all over the place. The unforseen stop is WAY worse than the calculated stop.

There's something to be said for the accomplishment of moving a lot of stuff at once. If you ever actually get it all where it's supposed to go. But clearly this can't be done without sacrificing time. Energy. Focus. Accuracy.And these are precisely the reason that all those jobs seem to stay on the back of the damn bike forever.

The funny thing is, the people who can most easily recognize the bike is overloaded are the ones who aren't riding it. The open-mouthed gapers who look on with fascination. Marveling. CAN he do it? Which turns into a sort of morbid jenga-like fascination: what if I put one MORE box on there? Would THAT tip it over? I mean, CLEARLY he has the other 423 boxes under control. What's a 424th box?

And what if you are the customer? When this guy pulls up to your door, do you get the sense you're not working with a quality company?

If you are the dispatcher, do you start to ask this guy to park his bike around the corner and walk into the office with a single package under his arm to preserve the illusion he's hand delivering them one at a time?

When you feel overloaded, do you just stop the bike and dump it all in the street? Do you refuse to ride it until someone takes 1/2 the stuff off? 2/3 of the stuff? Would it seem normally loaded with one absurdly large box (and a two-week window to ride it 100 miles)?

Have I beaten the shit out of this metaphor?

Setting Expectations

For years I labored under the impression that, in order to create great work, you needed a proper budget. In fact, frequently my first question, after being delivered a brief was "Why isn't there a budget on this brief?" After all, budget defines scale. Right? And often that fact was sheepishly explained away with that classic dodge: "They don't have much money, but if we come up with a really great idea, the client will find the money."

And no matter how good we thought the idea was, how breakthrough, how strategically sound, how oh-so-right for their brand, the fact is, I can count on one hand the number of times a client dug deeper to fund a great idea. Out of around 2000 briefs over 14 years. And one of them was three months ago.

Gradually the realization emerged that the limits of an idea aren't defined by the budget. In fact, most truly great ideas inherently have scale. They work, somehow, at every size. As a single tweet and as a full length feature. Expectations should be set on how to spend any budget in a way that delivers a well executed idea to an appropriate number of consumers at the right time and for the right reason. Budget doesn't define the idea. Just, perhaps the scale and the expectations.

Ever seen the NPR tiny desk series? These are bands who typically take command of a stage with amps, effects, roadies, and seething throngs of supporters. But instead, they are taking command of a room the size of my kitchen for a group of about 25. The result? Well, as long as the artist is worth a damn (think, the idea) it works at any scale. Is it different than the full-blown stage experience? Hell yeah. Is it as good or better? Certainly to the 25 people in the room it's better. Their expectations have been set for exclusive. intimate. Lo-Fi. And for the rest of us, watching at home, it's still pretty killer – thanks to NPR's broadcasting expertise.

Witness. A great idea. At a fully manageable scale.

You can see this artist on a slightly larger scale here in Dallas at Club Dada on July 22nd.

Leaving

It's so hard to say goodbye.
It's so much easier to just quietly slip out. Like after you realize you've had one too many at your friends' wedding and you just walk straight to the door and up to your room and crash. no warning. No friendly goodbye. Just a stiff-legged lurch to the elevator before trying to open your hotel door with your driver's license.

It's hard for me to say goodbye -- on my last day of a job. On my last day visiting my parents. When I drop my son off at school. When I leave my wife on a business trip.

But I'm saying goodbye. To Facebook.
And it's both harder and easier than I thought it would be.

Deleting Farmville? I didn't give it a second thought.
Deleting "Your year in Facebook statuses"? Easy.

Hiding (you can't truly delete) 150 pictures of France?
Harder. You have to do it one at a time.

Turning all my privacy settings to zero?
Kind of hard.

Listening to my Mom lament that she won't be able to find me.
A little hard.

Giving up statuses from 30 restaurants, 20 liquor brands, 15 causes, 5 airlines, Groupon and living social, and "Dallas Mavericks re the World Champions"?
Easy. I follow them all on twitter anyway - and they all pretty much repeat themselves if it's worth saying.

No longer following the daily statuses of 410 relatives, coworkers, former coworkers, vendors, clients, high school and college friends. As easy and as hard as it sounds.

No longer sharing things with those people? REALLY EASY, actually.

Remembering the actual passwords for 30 apps that have an option to sign in with facebook instead?
Severely fucking difficult.

Finding other things to do?
Easy.

Will google+ replace facebook for me?
Lord, I hope not.

While it's my job to be up on all this stuff,
I'd like to think I can do my job better with fewer distractions and more actual personal contact.
But we'll see.
Maybe I was right?
Or maybe I'm a fool.

But I'm getting the F outta here.

What I learned from the NBA Finals

The NBA Finals taught me quite a bit.

They taught me about Lebron: Don't be that guy.
The overpromise-underdeliver guy.
The guy who tries to win by stacking the deck.
The guy who's mouth writes checks he simply can't cash.
That's the guy who, when he can't hit a basket, the fans and the media hang him out to dry.

And more importantly they taught me about Dirk: Be that guy.
The guy who wins by putting in the effort.
The guy who has learned not to celebrate before the ball is in the basket and the clock reads 0:00.
The guy who puts his team first.
That's the guy, who when he can't hit a basket, the team and fans behind him rise up to be the difference.

There were a ton of great basketball players in the middle, with great stories all their own: from Bosh to Barea, from Wade to JET.
Each playing their part, doing their best.
There were a ton of great fans – Mavs fans who've waited for it way too long.
Cavs fans who were all too happy to see LeBron choke on his own tongue.
Heat fans who just couldn't cheer loud enough to drown out the steady march to defeat.

I'm not a Dallas native, or a born-blue Mavs fan.
But I took particular pleasure in watching really good basketball where, in my opinion, the good guys won.
Not the best paid athletes, or the ones with the most lucrative endorsement contracts.
But guys I'd let my son get autographs from.

Congratulations to the 2011 Dallas Mavericks.
And thanks for a great run.

This Matters

I've worked in the advertising business for 15 years. I've seen a lot of high-pressure assignment come and go. I've lived and died by decisions made by clients, colleagues, clients' wives, etc. Sort of. We've always looked at each other and consoled ourselves with the fact that, while we take our jobs incredibly seriously - while we strive to do not just good work, but truly great work - we can look at each other at 5:30 (sometimes 5:30AM) and say "Hey - it's just advertising. Nobody's gonna die."

Usually that's true.

Which is why it's very sad for me to report that Anna Basso passed away on June 8. I didn't know Anna. I only know of her through the 1million4anna website that was created by my old agency, Firehouse, to give hope to a beautiful high school student battling Stage 4 Ewing's Sarcoma, a type of bone cancer.

It's an amazing story. One you can read for yourself at the website. And while Anna's struggle is over, the assignment far from over.

Miraculously, the website did indeed garner over 1 million prayers for Anna.
Miraculously, Anna lived to see it happen. And graduate from high school.
Her family - and all patients who battle cancer - continue to need prayers.
And while I'm not a religious guy, I know every prayer counts when you're facing something as big as cancer, or a child with cancer.

Send them a card. And a prayer. And share 1million4anna with someone else.

Saskia Hamilton

Charlie is insane. Yet doing something very right. Like, Cool.