Living Life Like a Butterfly

My friend Sarah and I picked a perfect day to sit outside for lunch.

Today in Abilene, Texas, the breeze was cool, the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the monarch butterflies were passing through on their fall migration. Sarah and I just happened to eat lunch together outside today, in a spot where a couple hundred monarchs were fluttering about.

The butterflies were breathtaking to watch, of course. And, more than that, they fascinated me.

Here they were, in the midst of a few-thousand-mile flight south to Mexico for the winter. But these butterflies were not soaring by, as Canadian geese zoom past during their own annual migration. The butterflies' migration looked nothing like an American family road trip, with no stops allowed except bathroom breaks.

Instead, the monarch butterflies seemed to be taking their time. Sarah and I watched as they simply fluttered around this cluster of bushes and trees in Abilene, Texas, almost as if they lived there. Had someone been visiting Abilene today and seen these butterflies, he would have assumed that he had stepped into a permanent butterfly garden - not that these beautiful insects were just passing through.

I want to go through life like the butterflies do.

I want to live life with a destination in mind, with an innate purpose and goal which I press on to achieve. But I do not want to travel toward that destination single-mindedly, like a Canadian goose. I do not want to zoom through life, non-stop, trying to reach my goal without delay.

I want to travel toward my goal like a monarch butterfly. Moving from place to place, with the same path and purpose and focus as the Canadian goose, but enjoying the trip along the way. Slowing down enough to savor each moment, each location, each season. Taking time to get to know people and experience places as I go. Realizing that each stop along the journey might be just as important, and as meaningful, and as beautiful, as the final destination.

Are you living life like a goose, or like a butterfly?

Starbucks and Disappointed Hopes

I don't mind Starbucks. I wouldn't say that Starbucks coffee is my favorite, and I can think of other coffee houses that have great atmosphere, and sell fair trade, and are going green. But Starbucks is fine.

There is one thing that always disappoints me about Starbucks, though. It is this:

When Starbucks advertises its drinks on posters, table tents, etc., it shows steaming hot Pumpkin Spice Lattes, or cool-and-creamy Mint Chocolate Frappuccinos, served in beautiful china mugs or glass stemware, with swirls of caramel syrup or chocolate shavings or cinnamon flakes.

Have you ever been served a Starbucks espresso drink in a china mug with cinnamon flakes on top of the foamed milk? Has anyone?

My Starbucks coffee has only ever been presented to me in the mostly recycled/recyclable paper cups (or plastic, for cold drinks), and always with a lid that hides any cinnamon flakes that might have been sprinkled on my drink by an extra-thoughtful barista. No matter if I plan to stay in the Starbucks store for hours, sipping my drink and chatting with friends or reading, my coffee still comes in the to-go cup with a lid.

Why? If I intend to drink my coffee inside the store, why can't Starbucks serve my drink to me in the manner in which it is advertised? In the nice china mug, with the swirls and flakes and cinnamon dust?

I should think that it would be easy to ask customers, "for here or to go?" when they place their orders, and to serve their drinks accordingly. Using mugs and glasses for in-store orders would surely save trees and landfill space, although I admittedly do not know how much the extra dishwashing would affect water usage. And if a "for here" customer had not yet finished her drink by the time she was ready to leave the store, she could easily request a to-go cup for the remaining coffee.

Please, Starbucks, stop using your ads to raise my hopes for a delightful coffee-drinking experience, only to dash them with another paper or plastic cup when I visit your store. The idea is to "under-promise, over-deliver"; not the other way around.

"I love my city. Don't send the Olympics here."

In less than five days from this writing, the International Olympic Committee will decide which city will host the 2016 Olympics. The top contenders are Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro. Officials from each city have spent months (or years?) trying to convince the world (or, at least the Committee) that their city is worthy of hosting the Games. In similar fashion, a grassroots organization of purported Chicagoans has launched a marketing effort promoting the Olympic bid...for Rio.

The group's website, www.ChicagoansForRio.com, quite attractively displays information about the Olympic Games and why Chicago should NOT be the host in 2016. The main reason why not? Finances. These Chicagoans do not want their city to go bankrupt with all of the obligatory Olympic-sized construction and infrastructure projects.

The "Chicagoans for Rio" site features an animated counter claiming to show the "2009 City Deficits to Date," plus fun facts about the debt incurred by previous host cities of the Olympics, a photo slideshow of the now-unused 21 (out of 22) Olympic venues in Athens, and a scrolling marquee of supposed site visitor comments supporting Rio de Janeiro's bid over Chicago's. Other helpful (or amusing) features of the site include links to recent crime records from Chicago; a "head-to-head" comparison of Rio vs. Chicago; and links to purchase "Chicagoans for Rio" merchandise, to email the IOC, and to support Rio's bid on the Rio 2016 website.

Last Thursday, a Chicago Fox News station broadcasted the story of "Chicagoans for Rio", but was politely asked to stop talking about it, as the report "would harm Chicago's chances" for being awarded the bid. Ironically, this shushing only garnered more attention for the movement, as Drudge Report, Twitterers, and several online journals and blogs spread the word about the cease-and-desist.

The publicity about "Chicagoans for Rio" has also drummed up some questions about the group's veracity: given that the website lists no contact information, how do we know for sure that the group members are truly from Chicago? Who's to say they are not really from, say, Rio? And where are they getting their budget deficit facts, anyway?

Nevertheless, let's assume for the moment that "Chicagoans for Rio" truly is a group of Chicagoans willing to forego the honor of hosting the Olympics in exchange for some semblance of fiscal responsibility. Assuming that they are a spontaneous grassroots organization with no budget, here is what I would recommend if they truly want to dissuade the International Olympic Committee by Friday:

1) Get people talking. The shushing of Fox News generated some buzz already; "Chicagoans for Rio" needs more. Start a blog telling the full story behind the website, behind the Fox News story, behind the shushing - everything! - and include buttons to make it easy for people to Tweet, email, embed, Digg it, and post it to Facebook. Invite people to use the Twitter hashtag #chicagoansforrio to share reasons why the Olympics should be hosted in Rio and not in Chicago. Post YouTube videos in which Chicagoans share these reasons audio-visual style.

2) Get people involved. The whole anonymous website thing might be the "safe" way for the organizers to go, but they need some legitimate method of showing how many Chicagoans support Rio for the 2016 Olympics. They could start a petition (secure, of course) on the website in which visitors submit their names and email addresses to show their support for Chicagoans for Rio. Or they could start a Facebook group (the group "2,000,000 for the olympics in chicago" currently has only 99,540 members). Or they could invite Chicagoans to tweet their "send the Olympics to Rio" messages to the IOC (@Olympics).

3) Be the anti-Chicago2016. For everything that the Chicago Olympic Committee has done to promote Chicago as the host city for the 2016 Games, the "Chicagoans for Rio" group should do the same to plead against Chicago as the 2016 host city. So maybe they cannot replicate the entire Chicago 2016 site by Friday, but they could still create some videos or write some articles to counter the COC's arguments point-for-point. They could post a nice slideshow describing why Rio, rather than Chicago, is ideal for the 2016 Olympics.

But again, these suggestions could only be worthwhile if "Chicagoans for Rio" are truly in earnest. And even if "Chicagoans for Rio" do try some of these tactics, the plan could always backfire - the International Olympic Committee might vote for Chicago 2016 just to spite them.

The Home Depot and Edutainment

Majesco Entertainment Company recently released a game for the Wii, featuring home improvement retailer The Home Depot. The game, "Our House: Party!" features 175 mini-games in which players (up to four) complete home improvement projects in order to make their homes the best in the neighborhood. These projects include tasks like construction, demolition, plumbing, wiring, landscaping, decorating, and, of course, racing through The Home Depot store to get the necessary power tools.



Majesco also released a similar version of the game - "Our House" - for Nintendo DS. In the DS version, players start as contractors who must build customer's houses in order to save up enough money to build their own home.

The first brilliant thing about these games is that they're just plain fun. (Or at least they sound fun! I haven't tested them out yet.) The second brilliant thing is that, in the midst of all that fun, Majesco and The Home Depot have combined education (learn, loosely, how to do various projects), branding (The Home Depot, of course!), and entertainment. The game provides instruction and fun in a positive brand experience for The Home Depot's potential customers.

The Home Depot creates other positive brand experiences, too, without forcing customers to pay them a dime. In addition to the caricatured "do-it-yourself" projects of the "Our House" and "Our House: Party!" games, The Home Depot shares scores of free, real-life "how to" videos on their YouTube channel. And, as I understand, anyone can visit a Home Depot store during their project workshops for hands-on instruction in home improvement.

These are the kinds of things that attract customers to a brand. Give people something useful, teach them, provide them a service - for free. In the process you will be building trust, building rapport, and building relationships with people. And then, when those people really do need a product that you sell, with whom will they prefer to spend their money? You've proven yourself trustworthy in a service that does not earn you money; now those people will be ready to trust you with a service that does.

How can your organization provide an honest-to-goodness, helpful, positive, fun brand experience for people, before they ever have to spend a dime?

Good mobile web? Someone needs to step up.

Two MediaPost publications reported last week on a Yankee Group study that assessed the overall quality of mobile websites. Yankee Group researchers evaluated 27 major mobile sites on criteria including design, usability, and ability to adapt to multiple devices and networks. The findings were disappointing: the average score was 52 out of 100 - a failing grade.

The highest scorers among the group, which included popular news, sports, and search sites, were as follows: Google search (81), Yahoo search (76), Google News (73), Yahoo News (73), MLB.com (71), Rivals.com (58), and ESPN.com (57). When translated into academic grades, the highest scorer (Google) only achieved a B-.

Given that smartphone usage continues to grow massively (Nielsen reports that smartphone adoption has increased 72% quarter-over-quarter this year, to 26 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2009), this mobile web failure is a sorry state. But it means that there exists lots of opportunity for companies to fill that space by developing mobile sites that are truly outstanding.

Imagine how much of the mobile web audience could be captured by a company that offers an A+ mobile site, at a time when the top competitor (Google) only scores a B-. Imagine the kind of fan base that company could build if its mobile site communicated essential information in a clean, simple, easy-to-read, easy-to-navigate format, optimized for any mobile device.

How can companies do this?

1) Simplify. Tell mobile users what they want to know; do not overwhelm them with information. In your writing, be succinct. In graphs and charts and design, use as few strokes as possible to accurately communicate the information. Use space wisely, without crowding. For inspiration, read up on books about clean design and simplifying your life; or browse through top design magazines and "best of the web" lists.

2) Detect. Determine whether the user is accessing your site from a desktop/laptop or from a mobile device. For users surfing on mobile phones, automatically route them to the version of your site that is optimized for mobile. You might do this by providing customers with a separate web address for your mobile site (my alma mater uses http://www.acu.edu for desktop, and http://m.acu.edu for mobile). Or, for an even better user experience, take Carl Howe's recommendation and invest in device detection on your mobile site; this will allow you to provide users with a site that is optimized for their specific mobile platform.

3) Target. Customize users' experience based upon their location. Use the GPS data from their phones to give them information relevant to their geographic area. Unless they state otherwise, treat their mobile web experience like local search. If they are looking at music, show them concerts near them. Looking at food? Show them restaurants near them. Weather? Show them local weather. Sports? Show them the local teams. And then provide easy access to information from other regions as well.

4) Research. Ask users what they want in a mobile web experience. Ask them to critique several mobile sites; ask them what they like and dislike. Ask them what their favorite mobile sites are, and why. Ask them which information on your site should be displayed on a mobile device, and which information is irrelevant. In order to provide a great customer experience, you must know what experience your customers want.

The mobile web space is wide open for companies that will optimize their sites for the mobile user experience.

Subways: Boring or Beautiful?

Last week, New York City's Metropolitan Transit Authority unveiled a project that will make subway riders' commute a bit "brighter."

That project is the newly completed art installation by the late Conceptual artist Sol Lewitt. The piece, entitled "Whirls and Twirls (MTA)", is an arrangement of brilliant porcelain tiles on the wall above the staircase at the 59th Street-Columbus Circle subway station. The piece is the first of three Lewitt works commissioned by the MTA; the other two are compass rose floor designs. (Read more about the work at www.nytimes.com.)


Photo by Ángel Franco, New York Times


The piece rather reminds me of another bit of art and culture that was added to the NYC subway recently - without the direction of the Metropolitan Transit Authority. One evening in November 2008, Improv Everywhere, a volunteer group that "causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places," opened an "art gallery" on the 23rd Street subway platform. See their video below:




Both of these initiatives took a typically dirty and dreary part of New Yorkers' daily life - riding the subway - and made it interesting and beautiful. They brought joy (or in the case of Improv Everywhere, "chaos and joy") to the public. At no cost to the public.

What can your organization do to brighten up the lives of your audience? How can you add beauty and delight and surprise and laughter to your customers' experience? What part of your product or service is taken for granted as dull or distasteful, and what can you do to change it?

And don't make your customers bear the cost of this change. Take it out of your marketing budget. The repeat business of your delighted customers and their friends will be more than enough recompense for any extra expense.

What They Don't Know Can Kill You

Over lunch earlier this week, my friend Howdy and I had an interesting conversation about the hoopla surrounding President Obama's speech to America's schoolchildren on September 8.

During an interview with student reporter Damon Weaver in August, President Obama announced that on September 8 he would be making a speech to schoolchildren across America. By August 21 the press had picked up the story, reporting also that the President's address was to be accompanied with a curriculum for teachers to use with the speech. The curriculum suggested that teachers engage students with questions like, "What is the president trying to tell me?", "What does the president want me to do?", and "What new ideas and actions is the president challenging me to think about?"; and with assignments such as "writ[ing] letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." The actual contents of the speech were not released.

By September 1, conservative parents, educators, and activists were up in arms.

For adults already concerned by more liberal shifts in our nation's politics and education, the speech could only mean one thing: an attempt by President Obama to push his left-wing agenda on the children of America. And the accompanying curriculum - typical of any critical-thinking exercise in American schools - must, of course, be a ploy to further brainwash the children. How does the president have the right to preach to our children and dictate curriculum in our schools?

CNN, among other news channels, covered the story of conservatives' outrage. Among conservative bloggers, a flurry of blog posts arose, displaying such titles as, "Obama's next effort: a Children's Crusade?", "Beloved Leader to Begin Indoctrination of Youth", "Dilemna: [sic] What's a mom to do? Creepy President to deliver speech to all public school children!", and "September 8, 2009: National Keep Your Child at Home Day". These bloggers compared President Obama to everyone from Kim Jong Il to Adolf Hitler to Fidel Castro.

Finally, on September 7, the day before the President's speech, the White House released the text for the incendiary address.

It was perfectly harmless.

The speech was a pep talk to America's students, encouraging them to be responsible, to work hard in school, to do their homework, to respect their teachers and their parents. It was a message that we all want our children to hear. And it was to be delivered by a man who, for some children, might be the only decent role model to whom they would listen.

This incident, says my friend Howdy, is a perfect illustration of a sagacious maxim: What they don't know, can kill you.

When people distrust an organization (as they generally distrust the government), and they don't know the full story on what that organization is doing, they will make it up. And usually, what they make up is wrong, and is the worst-case scenario, and is quite damaging to the organization's reputation.

Had the White House released the text of President Obama's speech from the beginning, concerned conservatives would have had no room for alarm. No room to assume the worst. No room to let their imaginations run wild with the horrible propaganda the president might be pushing. The administration could have avoided the entire public relations mess.

Howdy asked me whether I think the same principle holds true in the private sector. I think it does. Obviously, the public does not need to know all the inner workings of a company, just as we do not need to know all of our nation's military secrets and other classified information. But when a company unveils a new initiative, or recalls a product, or releases a similar big announcement, they should be prepared for full disclosure of the situation. Especially in situations of PR crises, companies should be wary of sending cryptic messages.

Remember, people will make up what they don't know. Don't leave the public to make up the parts that are important. Give them the facts, so that they can't give you their wild speculations.

Don't leave room for people to make important stuff up. What they don't know can kill you.