Oprah Effect

An Oprah Effect, named after talk show host Oprah Winfrey, is amplification of any idea, cultural trend or product by media.

When you do what I do for a living, manage large e-com web sites, you pray for Oprah Effects like farmers pray for rain. You don’t watch the sky. You watch daily order counts like seismologists watch earthquake needles. Watching order counts is voodoo. Wishing doesn’t make it so. Watching a needle doesn’t make it move. Most Oprah Effects are like tsunamis. They happen with little warning and they change everything.

What do you remember about 1996? The Olympic Games were in Atlanta. Bob Dole received the Republican nomination for President, a race he would lose to Bill Clinton. The Taliban took the city of Kabul and Alan Greenspan discussed irrational exuberance pin pricking the Internet bubble that would fully deflate by the year 2000.

I remember being at the International Gift Show (picture of the scrum that is the NY Gift Show at left) in August at the Javits Center in New York City and having a camera crew from Good Morning America interviewing David Kapell, the creator of Magnetic Poetry Kit, in the Found Objects booth. By August the water was three stories high and rising fast. A tsunami Oprah effect was happening to Magnetic Poetry Kit. What started the tidal wave that was that summer? What created the Oprah Effect that brought GMA to the party?

Oprah Effect Defined
Oprah Effects use media's extended reach and quick delivery to increase awareness of an idea, trend, fashion or product. When Poetryslam, a word game I created, was featured in the Raleigh News and Observer we experienced a minor Oprah Effect. When Katharine Graham gave Magnetic Poetry Kits to her influential friends at a dinner party we saw the water recede signaling a tsunami Oprah Effect. Oprah Effects may or may not “tip” an idea, trend or product. Oprah effects do not guarantee a product's ability to cross the chasm.

Neo-Marketing
Marketing used to be perceived as a sequential game. When I sold bar soap for Procter and Gamble and candy for M&M/Mars we approached selling as a territorial game like football. We created and used sequential orderly strategies. We moved down the field. Our “invasions” required an army of “boots on the ground” sales people; grocery store slotting fees and special deals for Wal Mart. This game was about distribution not capturing hearts and minds. We thought “evangelists” preached in church and good marketing grew brands in linear ways related to our brilliant efforts (kidding of course). We didn’t market as much as we farmed: buy seed, plant seed, fertilize seed, harvest crop.

Then the world got full. Stores got full; an average grocery store has 50,000 products, double that if you are in a “Super Store.” Our minds got full; Americans see an estimated 600 to 3,000 “ads” per day. Our time got full, how much “free” time do you have now versus five years ago. I used to read fiction and go fishing not so much anymore. The ways to reach us splintered and then filled up. Remember, and this really dates me, when there were four television channels, no Internet and hearing your favorite song on the radio was a big deal?

Intense competition directed at cynical people who’ve been munching on diets of over 1,000 ads per day with no time, little free mental bandwidth, eroding loyalty and a Do-It-Yourself mindset means the game has changed. Distribution matters little if no one cares about your product. If a tree falls in this ultra-crowded forest there may only be the sound of millions of dollars being sucked down the “fruitless marketing” toilet. Your tree, or your brand, may go back to mulch in the time it took me to write this sentence.

Some back-of-the-envelope calculations put the number of ads between age 10 and 50 north of 14,000,000 (1,000 ads per day X 14,600 days). If you think you will create an ad so creative it breaks through your customer’s well honed filters, filters that can smell an ad like our cave dwelling ancestors could smell a meal, then you are nuts. We’ve seen 14,000,000 ads. Take your ad money and head to Vegas. You will get better odds.

Where and when do Oprah Effects start?
A common mistake is to think an Oprah Effect resulted from things that happened immediately before the event. This is RARELY the case. An Oprah Effect has a long tail. No one creates a widget, calls Oprah’s production staff on the phone says, “Oprah my cool widget is ready for your show, when will we be on?” Oprah Effects are media amplifications of existing viral marketing.

How and where you start viral marketing matters. Luckily Found Objects co-founder Janet McKean ran the gift shop at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago before we started Found Objects. Janet’s network of buyer friends from other museum stores purchased the first Magnetic Poetry Kits. Funky gifts need funky stores. Take Magnetic Poetry Kit to Wal Mart and Katherine Graham doesn’t give words on magnets to her smart friends setting off a massive Oprah Effect. Serendipity is a wonderful thing. Eckert Tolle says everything is as it is supposed to be and David Kapell’s call to Found Objects is an example of magical coincidence.

Oprah Effects start with what you name your product and the first people (or stores) that talk about (or sell) it. Few think about how a distribution choice will influence a product’s future. Slap up a web page, head to Bentonville Arkansas or hire a showroom at the Merchandise Mart and you are good to go right, maybe and maybe not. Distribution is destiny. By lucky accident Magnetic Poetry Kit took the first steps to an Oprah Effect when the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (they were already in) and the MCA in Chicago listened to Janet’s over-the-phone pitch and trusted her enough to buy 12 Magnetic Poetry Kits each. Janet’s initial call to just the right distribution partners meant in four years millions would have magnetic words on their refrigerators. Call Wal Mart, or a better example Barnes and Noble, at this early point and you might never had heard of Magnetic Poetry Kits.

In his massively important and influential book The Tipping Point Malcolm Gladwell discusses how Hush Puppies became “cool” with club kids in New York. Those "cool" kids' influence stretched beyond their immediate group. The trend got noticed, written about (i.e. amplified) and tipped. Put words on magnets on refrigerators in high design households and rapid transmission of the Magnetic Poetry Kit “meme” is a certainty. Where do we gather when we visit friends? If you answered their kitchen I owe you a Magnetic Poetry Kit. Extend placement on cool refrigerators in influential homes and see the first sparks of an Oprah Effect that would eventually reach millions. Here is a play-by-play:

• Hip Screen Writer goes into Museum of Contemporary Art to see Pop Art show.

• Stops in the museum shop and buys 5 Magnetic Poetry Kits to give to friends.

• Those 5 Friends buy 5 kits to give to friends.

• One of those friends is a set designer and decides to place Magnetic Poetry Kit on a fridge in a movie (this happened all the time and during our tenure as the exclusive sales representative NO add placement money was paid - designers did it because they loved the product).

• Friends in other parts of the country visit LA, see Magnetic Poetry Kit on their cool friend’s fridge. They return home and look for kits. They buy five and give to five friends creating another viral node.

Oprah Effects start where and when you start. In 2008, ten years after Magnetic Poetry Kit, getting an idea to tip can be faster. Social networks, emails and PDA’s make the transmission of memes faster, but we are exponentially more bombarded with information now vs. ten years ago. We can’t possibly process all important information in new data-intense worlds. We depend on salesmen, or guides, like Oprah, Boing Boing and Tech Crunch to filter valuable content from noise. On the surface it may seem like creating an Oprah Effect is easier now with all the technology. That assumes Oprah Effects are about distribution. Oprah Effects are about hearts and minds.

Why did Katherine Graham give Magnetic Poetry (MPK) to dinner party guests?
Wake Up Little Suzie, an influential Connecticut Avenue gift store in Washington, DC., is an important link in the long tail of MPK’s Oprah Effect. Wake Up Little Suzie is funky, cool and reflects the quirky buying patterns of its owner (one of her store windows is on the left). Wake Up Little Suzie was one of the first non-museum stores in the country to sell Magnetic Poetry Kit. How hard do you think the owner of Wake Up Little Suzie had to “sell” the owner of the Washington Post words on magnets? The owner of the Washington Post bought every kit Susan had. A week after Ms. Graham gives MPK as gifts her “living” section editor features MPK on the cover of the weekend section. Susan was sold out. She took people’s names and they waited patiently as she placed an order for over 1,000 kits. Before that order arrived, we had another order for a thousand more.

The Washington Post mention did much more than wipe out Magnetic Poetry Kits in every store in Washington for several weeks. That Lifetime cover story alerted the rest of the media. One day not long ago I was fishing for small mouth bass in the Susquehanna river near Scranton, Pennsylvania. On a large leafless tree sat close to fifty buzzards. Several buzzards stretched and dried their wings in the sun. All of them watched every step I took. Media act like those buzzards. They sit, dry their wings and wait. When a respected member of their flock finds a story they have to join. Left out is dead.

An important attribute of media flock psychology is the fear of being left out is greater than the desire to find something new. Scopes are great but hard to come by, but being the 100th on a story is career suicide and not acceptable. First is risky and last is unacceptable. Feeding frenzies happen when some untouchable outlet such as the Washington Post stamps a trend “approved”. ABC was setting up that interview within days after the Post article dropped.

Remember to work backwards from the Oprah Effect. The first museum stores start the buzz train. The owner of Wake Up Little Suzie, who has great radar for new trends, hears about the trend when several customers ask her for a product called Magnetic Poetry Kit. She goes to the International Gift Show looking for MPK. Wake Up Little Suzie becomes one of the first gift stores not located in a museum to sell the product. Several years go by. Each year buzz grows along with David’s ability to produce large numbers of kits. More stores like Wake Up Little Suzie start to sell Magnetic Poetry Kit.

Distribution, creation of buzz and tipping a trend are inextricably linked. Recent examples prove the point. If you own a Wii you are blessed and may have stood in a long line. Go through that much work and not tell five friends about your purchase – of course not. Go through much more work and not get a WII? Then you get angry and tell five friends about why Wiis stink.

There were several competitive products to Magnetic Poetry Kit. One was called Fridge Fun and the other was named something equally uninteresting. Several stores, Wake Up Little Suzie among them, sold all three products. Again, work back from the Oprah Effect. David Kapell names his product Magnetic Poetry Kit. That name had risks. Not everyone loves poetry, but the people who hold the power of transmission, the Katherine Grahams, love poetry. A product named "Fridge Fun" is harder to sell to museum stores. Magnetic Poetry Kit sounds like art. "Fidge Fun" does not. David’s original Bauhaus-simple box design, logo and label fed the art museum store market.

David found Janet and Found Objects serendipitously. He asked the Walker Arts Center Store Manager who should help sell his creation. Janet, freshly out of the museum world, calls her friends running stores like the one she just left. She raves about this new gift and makes the first sales of David’s creation. The necessity of filling those orders kept box design simple. The storm that would become an overwhelming Oprah Effect was born in David’s garage, Janet’s phone calls to just the right people, Magnetic Poetry Kit’s perfect name, a simple box design and Katherine Graham’s visit to Wake Up Little Suzie several years later.

Related Articles: Real Things Matter, Real Things Matter 2

Marketing Terms Dictionary

Have you lived through an Oprah Effect? What triggered your Oprah Effect? Please share your experience and ideas.

Marketing Terms Dictionary

Brand Dead Reckoning
Brands are organic, living things. Constant tweaking is necessary to keep a brand current and alive. Dead reckoning is the process of estimating one's current position based upon a previously determined position, and advancing that position based upon known speed, elapsed time, and course. Brand dead reckoning is managing a brand through time by looking back to previously determined positions and adjusting the brand in real time to a position desired today. Adjustments can take many forms including new advertising, packaging, features or benefits. Procter and Gamble (P&G) is a master at brand dead reckoning.

Viral Marketing
Viral Marketing is Word-of-Mouth marketing spread by “evangelists” who Malcolm Gladwell grouped into connectors, mavens and salesmen. Viral marketing is spread through social networks and amplified by Oprah Effects in media potentially adding exponential speed and reach to the viral marketing event horizon.

Viral Marketing Event Horizon
A Viral Marketing Event Horizon is the time window between tipping point and black hole obscurity. Ideas and products may experience a long tail after tipping. They may maintain a slow burn for years instead of slipping completely off our cultural radar. Magnetic Poetry Kit tipped, climbed the bell curve and now sells a steady amount.

My mashup of Moore's Chasm chart showing Tipping Point and Viral Marketing Event Horizon. Note how trend doesn't disappear. Instead, most ideas and products who've earned Oprah Effects settle back into their mean.

Viral Node
Viral Nodes are transmissions origins. They are the first case, the origin, in the epidemic in a particular place. Be the first to discuss something within a definable geography or tribe and you are the viral node for that idea in that context.

Evangelist or Brand Evangelist
People who feel they have a strong personal connection to a product or brand and “preach” about their positive experience to anyone who will listen and in any form they can.

Connectors
From Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point. Connectors know lots of people. I saw an article recently that defined “uber-connectors” as people who use social networks and technology to “know” more than 10,000 people.

Mavens
From Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point. Mavens are information specialists we depend on to program our VCR’s (or DVR’s), cell phones and computers. They know all the latest cool stuff long before you and can, in some detail, expound on the relative merits of iPhones, blenders and cars.

Salesmen
From Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point. Salesmen and Saleswomen persuade us. They have credibility and the power of suggestion. We listen to them. We defer to them. In an ever increasing world salesmen and saleswomen become trusted guides. Oprah may be the best saleswoman on the planet.

Tipping Point
Every idea, virus, cultural trend or marketing campaign has a boiling point where transmission becomes exponential. The summer of 1996 Magnetic Poetry Kit tipped. Defined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book by the same title.

Crossing The Chasm
Theory popularized in Geoffrey Moore in his book Crossing the Chasm that product acceptance will experience difficulty as products move from geeky early adopters to more mainstream “majorities”. Moore’s states that what makes a product or idea popular with early adopters may create aversion in early majority consumers. What is cool to the geeks may scare the average Joes and Janes. Oprah Effects may help a product, idea or fashion cross Moore’s chasm. Oprah Effects are not the only way a product can cross the chasm. In fact, mainstream media typically follows and amplifies tends created in blogs, forums, chat rooms and social networks. Since Oprah Effects are media driven they are more statistically likely to happen for products that figure out how to cross the chasm on their own.

Regression To The Mean
There is a superstitious belief that being on the cover of Sports Illustrated is a negative thing. Once you attain the cover your game will deteriorate. Many players are superstitious. They don’t want the cover. This superstition is a good example of regression to the mean. Your performance is out-of-control good. It gets noticed and you are on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Soon after being on the cover your performance returns to its “mean”. You associate your “fall” with being on the cover. Oprah Effects are similar to being on the cover of Sports Illustrated. An Oprah Effect of any magnitude starts an invisible clock ticking. Once the viral marketing event horizon (see above) is reached the trend, idea or product will regress to its mean.

Memes
When Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme” in his book The Selfish Gene he was trying to use biological terms to name rapid transmission of “cultural information” such as a popular song, fashion or movies. Successful memes leap from brain to brain like viruses. The Heath brothers in Made to Stick tell us that some “memes” are more likely to be transmitted than others.

Magnetic Poetry Kit
Words on magnets most people use to “write” on their refrigerators or lockers.

Found Objects
Now closed gift company I co-founded in 1993. Found Objects sold the first Magnetic Poetry Kits to museum shops.

Oprah Effect
An Oprah Effect, named after talk show host Oprah Winfrey, is the amplification of a an idea, cultural trend or product by media. When Poetryslam, a word game I created, was featured in the Raleigh News and Observer we experienced a minor Oprah Effect. When Katharine Graham gave Magnetic Poetry Kits to her influential friends at a dinner party we saw the water recede signaling a tsunami Oprah Effect. Oprah Effects may or may not “tip” an idea, trend or product.

Simple Complexity

In The Death of Procter and Gamble I speculated P&G's model is dead. Making complex things simple may be the best summary of P&G's business model. You don't have to be in marketing for long to see how Zen such systems seem. Boil life down to simple easily stated truths, develop internal and external systems to support those truths and use advertising to pound said truths into as many brains as possible. Certainly it is easier to write how "simple" P&G systems were (my P&G tenure was close to 30 years ago). In fact, it took an army of people years to create this "complex simplicity". Even if you could create such systems today, and you can't, it would be a mistake. The P&G model is dead because products that lack complexity lack traction. Quietly and almost without notice P&G's "complex simplicity" has been replaced by marketing systems with roots in video games. These "simply complex" systems find ways to make simple things more complex. More complex things get traction.

In his excellent book Everything Bad Is Good For You Steven Johnson creates "the sleeper curve." Instead of agreeing with popular cultural critics who see a vast pop culture wasteland, Johnson sees the opposite. He believes the effect of increased exposure to increasingly complex pop culture means we are smarter. Our smarter brains demand more complex programming. Quickly, in your mind, compare Lost to My Three Sons and Johnson's point is made. Ever increasing complexity leads to ever increasing complexity. Attempt to boil things down to a mythical "lowest common denominator" and you walk past your customers. You walk down stairs toward simplicity as they walk up seeking challenge and complexity.

Don't make your product hard to buy. "Hard to buy" is not product complexity it is just frustration. No one likes to be frustrated especially when there is some easier system a click away. Do make your product complex. Video game creators know how to live on complexity's edge. Too complex and their games can't be understood. No one cares. Too simple and Johnson's "sleeper curve" insures smart gamers blow through the game and they don't recommend it to friends. Every successful game has the right amount of complexity. Every product has a similar teeter totter truth. Find the middle and you are good to go.

Anyone who reads this blog even sparingly knows my love of three-legged-stools. What is the three-legged-stool of making your product complex enough to be interesting but not so complex it is a turn-off?

1. Product Back Story
   
2. User Generated Content
3. Product's Global Impact
   

Product Back Story
When I worked at P&G there was a story about why Ivory Soap floated because of a manufacturing mistake. Here is that story told to another web site by P&G:

WE WENT TO PROCTOR AND GAMBLE, THE MAKERS OF IVORY SOAP, TO GET THE ANSWER. IT SAYS IVORY FLOATS BECAUSE A SMALL AMOUNT OF AIR IS INTENTIONALLY WHIPPED INTO IVORY AS IT'S BEING MADE. THIS MAKES IVORY SOAP LIGHTER THAN WATER, SO IT FLOATS.

BY THE WAY, P&G SAYS THE FLOATING IS THE RESULT OF A MANUFACTURING MISTAKE MADE YEARS AGO WHEN AN EMPLOYEE FAILED TO TURN OFF THE SOAP MAKING MACHINE AT LUNCHTIME, RESULTING IN TOO MUCH AIR BEING ADDED TO THE SOAP MIXTURE. NBC4.com in Maryland

This is a great product back story. It points to the "purity" of Ivory Soap, the intelligence of the organization that turned a negative into a positive and it humanizes a HUGE company. Someone made a mistake and you can't get much more "human" than making a mistake. Every product has an engaging back story. At some point somewhere smart people gathered around a fire and sang a song. That song is your product's back story. You mission is to find it, write it as engaging and in as self effacing way as P&G's Ivory Soap story and you've arrived at your product's back story.

User Generated Content
You are not your customer. Customers always tell product stories differently than their creators. Listen to your customers. Give them chances to create content around your product. The Kleenex ad featuring a couch in Times Square where people confess and cry into a box of Kleenex is highly effective user generated content "around" the product. Dale Backus "Crashes the Super Bowl" for Doritos.

Some crazy "scientists" drop Mentos into Diet Coke bottles and two brands become married as millions view the result. User generated content, done well, adds complexity and community. There are problems with both of the "corporate" examples above I will leave for another time. If you have favorite examples of user generated content please share. See my note at the bottom of this article for more things I need to help develop the idea of "simple complexity".

Product's Global Impact
We know we live on a large planet spinning through space. This knowledge is part of our "sleeper curve" of complexity. Every product leaves the planet a little better or a little worse. Every product has a global footprint. Understanding your product's footprint, what Paul Hawken called The Ecology of Commerce in his book by the same title, requires hard creative work. You may need to learn a new language. Carbon offsets, petroleum distillates and cradle-to-cradle manufacturing are just a few "global footprint" concepts your company needs to walk and talk. Not to sound scary, but if you don't understand these "complex" aspects of your product someone else will and is guaranteed to blog that knowledge to the world. Ahead of this train with room to spare is where you want to be. The tricky part is some things you want to reduce - use of oil for example. Other things you want to increase - using profits to help others. Create a system to judge your company's global footprint and share that judgement.

Comments and links needed:
Help me round out this idea with your favorite examples of:

• Examples of great product back stories.
• Examples of how video games layer complexity providing increasing challenge without burning out their fans.
  
• Other examples of creative User Generated Content.
• Other good reading examples for companies trying to evaluate their global footprint.

Thanks, Martin

The Death of Procter and Gamble

I read about the death of Procter and Gamble today. The P&G I joined in 1981 after working for Vassar is long gone. If you took a picture of a current Cincinnati sales training class you would not see the sea of conformist blue suits of my P&G year. Even then I didn't get the memo. The one Khaki suit in my year? If you guessed me you win a bar of soap. Take a P&G class picture today and I bet you see more human resource variation and "business casual". Who wears suits anymore? Blue suit rigid P&G is long gone.

Today I read about the death of P&G's business model in Steven B. Johnson's excellent , thought provoking, challenging book Everything Bad Is Good For You. Placing P&G's business model on a pyre is not Johnson's intent, but it is the logical extension of this stunning paragraph:

The way to attract the Aron Bakers (a Gladwellian "Maven" *) of the world is to make the product complex enough that they need experts to decipher them. Key influencers like to think of themselves as operating on the cutting edge, detecting patterns or trends in cultural forms that ordinary consumers don't perceive until someone points them out. The way to attract these experts, then, is to give them material that challenges their decoding skills, material that lets them show off their chops. Instead of rewarding the least offensive programming, the system (new media) rewards the titles that push at the edges of convention, the titles that welcome close (repeated) readings. You can't win over the aficionados with the lowest common denominator. (emphasis mine)
Everything Bad Is Good For You, Page 174, 175

P&G became a giant by making things simple. Ivory soap, Bounce, Tide and Mr. Clean solved easily identifiable everyday household problems in straightforward ways. Inside every product's feature set were hidden heart tugging benefits:

1. Bounce = no static cling so no social embarrassment.
2. Mr. Clean = clean kitchen = good mother and wife (sexist and stereotypical I realize but so where the ads).
   
3. Ivory Soap = so pure it floats and it extends its purity to you (Ivory was big when the mere use of soap, the first bar was sold in 1879, could project larger social values such as purity).
   

Working for P&G was simple too. There was a system for everything. The Five Steps To The Retail Sales Call was one system complete with a palm-sized scorecard. I received copies of one card with explanations of each step. My boss had another card to check that I did each step of the call when he worked with me on his bi-weekly training run. Everything had a simple system complete with colorful cards, easy to remember mnemonics, three to five steps and repeatable consistency. It ran like a Swiss watch...until it didn't.

I use my experience with P&G's sales systems because P&G's ads ran with similar clockwork precision. For many years P&G was the largest advertiser in the world. Daytime television, called soap operas in a nod to the P&G advertising that created them, became fuel to create brand fires. The elements of the P&G model:

1. Simple upbeat products
2. Address easily understood consumer "needs"
   
3. Tie to larger societal benefits (good mother, successful father, smart children)
4. Develop easy to comprehend messaging
   
5. Repeat message almost to infinity across many media (print, TV, radio)
   
6. Each message repetition increases traction - greater recall, more trial and increased brand loyalty

Johnson's "Sleeper Curve" idea is "bad" things are good for us because they change and challenge our brains. He provides great examples of how our "now" brains demand more complex story threads than even recent ancestors. Compare complexity of Lost to Hogan's Heroes and the point is made. We crave complexity because our "bad" culture has hooked us in a sleeper curve of ever increasing mental challenge.

Can Tide's story ever be told in an increasingly complex way? YES! But, the old ideas about increasing simplification must be abandoned. Tide may never inspire a hundred page user created "guide", but its story is more complex than detergent. How is Tide impacting landfills, water quality and the people who've used it for twenty, thirty and forty years? In two seconds we easily add new complex dimensions.

P&G is peopled by good smart people who see this trend. The Death of Procter and Gamble is important because, as marketers, we believe in reduction and simplicity. Generally we seek "lowest common denominator" solutions. I've never been in a meeting where we brainstorm how can we make our products and marketing more complex, denser. How can we build in mystery, quest and story like a video game? If you are thinking that is the meeting we need the I owe you a bar of Ivory soap.

Related Posts: ScentTrail
ScentTrail Defined, SentTrail 2, Real Things Matter, Real Things Matter 2

Related Books: * Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell note Gladwell's definition of connectors, mavens and salesmen

FatWallet.com

I met Tim Storm during the work with Seth Godin day in Dobbs Ferry six years ago. Tim is a good smart guy with a very cool site. Tim is the founder of FatWallet.com. Found Objects, the now out of business funky gift wholesaler I co-founded, had a "Free T-Shirt" offer go live on FatWallet. The offer was posted by a community member. I didn't even know what FatWallet.com was at the time. The offer was loose - tell a friend about FoundObjects.com and get a Free Found Objects Tee (my mistake #1). We didn't realize the offer could be amplified by placement on a site like Tim's (my mistake #2). In a typical week we gave away 2 or 3 t-shirts. We printed 144 and had 100 left after a month.

Cool Found Objects Tees
These were cool tees too. We printed the oval Found Objects logo on the front and the definition of a found object on the back. We received over 1,000 requests in an hour after my free offer found its way to FatWallet.com. I was freaking out. FatWallet worked with us to remove the offer, but the damage was done. We had 100 shirts, so we were now short 900 shirts (my mistake #3). In our offer, we didn't say we could switch out something of equal value (my mistake #4).

I walked across the parking lot to the screen printers, Found Objects was located in a small office complex, and asked them how fast and how much. They could get the 900 shirts printed for $4 a shirt, or around $4,000. Found Objects couldn't afford a $4,000 hit so I paid for the shirts. It cleaned out my savings. That $4,000 was why I had to sell my Litespeed to go to Seth's (read that story in my working with Seth Godin post). Even the people that filled out the form, the people that came from FatWallet, told me how stupid the offer was. They expected their shirt, but they told me things like "how could you have an offer without proof?" The offer was you tell a friend about FoundObjects.com and we send you a free tee. You didn't have to tell us your friend's email, just yours, and that you did tell a friend and we would mail you a shirt.

Where My Bad Idea Came From
I was trying to find Gladwell's "connectors" and "mavens", the highly connected people who would help spread the word about FoundObjects.com. Malcolm Gladwell explains that not all people are equal in his epoch-defining book The Tipping Point. I am dangerous after I finish a book as the Found Objects Free Tee offer proves.

Found Objects did need sherpas willing to help carry the "Found Objects" word up what, at the time, seemed like Everest. Finding those special "Citizen Marketers" who will contribute and help carry the load is critical. They are out there. I just went about finding them the wrong way six years ago. Hard expensive lessons are ones you don't forget.

Tim wrote me today about how FatWallet can amplify a mistake. I made many mistakes on the Found Objects free tee offer. Here is a quick summary of my marketing mistakes then:

Martin Marketing Mistakes - Found Objects Free Tee Offer

1. No "While Supplies..." Language. We had a limited supply of shirts and should have said so.
   
2. Didn't realize the power and scale of the Internet - remember this was six years ago. I didn't even know FatWallet existed. A few months later I met Tim, FatWallet's founder, at Seth's. I tried to explain about cleaning out my savings to pay for t-shirts and then selling my bike to be able to go to Seth's, but didn't do a very good job.
   
3. Don't make an offer you can't scale - we only had 100 shirts. Every offer I make now must scale. If 1,000,000 people want the thing you need to be ready to deliver (see point #2).
   
4. No offer swap language - this would have allowed me to swap the 900 people that I didn't have shirts for over to something else of equal value. This can seem like "bait and switch" unless you explain (see point #6).
   
5. The required action was was too loose - we should have required a purchase (to help pay for the cost of the shirt) or tightened up the minimal requirements. Found Objects was not Coca Cola or Budweiser. If we gave away something as dear as $4.00 we needed something material in return.
   
6. Our story was poorly told - We were a tiny company trying to get out of the mud. We should have made that clear. Mistakes happen, most people know that and will cut you a break if you are honest and ask for help.
   
7. Ask for help - My solution to this problem was to walk across the parking lot and solve the problem by printing shirts. That solution cleaned out our cash making the mistake bigger. Wisdom of Crowds says if I appealed to the 900 people, explained the problem - we didn't expect such a rush and were out of shirts - and asked for ideas we could have found a better solution and I would still be able to ride that Litespeed.
   
8. Don't hold grudges - my recommendation of Red Maxwell made it sound like I was upset with Tim and Fatwallet. I wasn't then and I am certainly not now six years later. The mistakes were all mine. Tim saw something way before I did - the power of the mashup. Bring sticky information (like coupon information) together and you reach critical mass. Better yet, create a platform where others can share their finds and you go nuclear while your costs are kept under control - much of the work is done by community members.
   
9. Get up faster - I stayed down on the ground on this one way too long. Today I would see the four or five ways to turn what seemed like a disaster to the positive by asking for help and listening. I was in problem solving mode and very worried about money. I didn't see the HUGE opportunity Tim, Fatwallet and whomever posted our offer gave us. People were streaming into our site and that is never a bad thing. NEVER A BAD THING.
10. No Follow on - I should have created a page where people could share the story of their Found Object tee. I can see the pictures of people at Storm King Arts Center in their Found Objects tee under huge sculpture or looking up at the Sistine Chapel in their Found Objects tee. I bet those tees went to cool places. Ask for those stories and share them across the Found Objects community.
    
11. Don't be so hard on myself - I bet that 99% of the type A marketing crew reading this post know exactly what I am talking about. We can be our own worst enemies. Certainly I made mistakes with the Found Objects Free Tee offer, but there was good news in there too. The glass was half full not half empty.
    
12. Test, test and test again - now I don't do anything quite as free wheeling as I did then because, in web land these days, you don't have too. You can take an offer send it to your best customers and ask them what stinks about it. Refine the offer, send it out again and so forth. There is never a need to fly blind online today. I read a book and tried something blind and across the entire site. No need to do that these days.
    
13. Say THANK YOU better - Tim, FatWallet, Seth and Red taught me so much and I am not sure I did a very good job of saying Thanks. I am trying to make up for that with this blog. I realized that Tim didn't hear appreciation in my note about Red. Hope he does now.

Here is Tim's email to me today (proving he is the second most wired guy on the planet next to Seth since I just posted my FatWallet story the other day):

Hey there -

Saw your post regarding FatWallet - I'm curious, did you contact us about the free T-shirt issue years ago? It has long been our policy for "free stuff" items to remove the topic upon request of the supplier.

One of the things that I like to tell people about our community, is that FatWallet acts like an amplifier - if you make a mistake, the scale of the community scales that mistake. If you make a corrective action and get it right, we make it even better!

All the best.

Tim

Tim is a good guy who executed a great idea very well. I've seen just how powerful FatWallet can be and stand in awe and admiration. Check out FatWallet.com before you buy anything and if you need to give away 1,000 shirts in an hour email Tim...he can help.

Found Objects Free Tee Stories
If you are one of the 1,000 people we shipped those cool Found Objects t-shirts too, please email me your story. Did you tee travel or stay home? Do you have any pictures of you in your Found Objects tee? I know the chance of this message in a bottle reaching anyone who got a shirt from us is small, but you would make my month if you share your story. My email is martinsellingzoe @ aol.com.

Want to See FoundObjects.com?
The archive still has some examples of the site we built. Click the link above or go to the Way Back Machine and type FoundObjects.com into the search box.



Read more about Tim, Fat Wallet and graceful lessons in the necesity of failure at ScentTrail.

ScentTrail 2

ScentTrail Defined discussed technological “crumbs” we create to find our way home. These paths emerge quicksilver and track to places beyond imagination. Rapidly, the first revolution is becoming something else, something different. Web 2.0 moves Act I’s speed and access to Act II’s connections and collaborations.

I was taught somewhere, probably at M&M/Mars, all business problems can be reduced to three things. We called this trinity a “three-legged-stool.” This may have been a necessarily stretching of a metaphor. The analogy’s important point is the trinity’s connection. Each element, each leg, must be equal or the stool wobbles.

What is the three-legged-stool of Web 2.0? Reading an article in Gerhard Gschwandtner’st Selling Power magazine (May Volume 28 Number 4) got me thinking about this question. The equal legs of Web 2.0 are:

• Social Networks
• Social Capital
• Original Content

Social Networks
Social networks are organic things that create energy. Like beehives or anthills, their sum is greater than totaling parts. These emergent systems shape and inform life inside the system. You are changed by your Digg recommendations and comments even as they influence and change others. As technology grants the ability to connect, however loosely, larger and larger groups we become smarter faster collectively. As a hive becomes larger it spreads influence, or “pollen” for the sake of example, creating more food. This “virtuous cycle” of ever increasing return makes social networks self-sustaining.

Malcolm Gladwell’s “connectors" bind us together into hives. I was in a meeting with Zack Hotchkiss from Bazaar Voice the other day. Zack told us about products on client catalog sites with over 1,000 reviews. Products with over 1,000 reviews are not products. They are movements or hives. The bee placing the 1,001 review is wants to be part of that product’s emerging hive. The marginal return for review 1,001 is zero. The act of writing review 1,001 is a dance signaling a desire to belong.


Social Capital
Social Capital is "reputation" created by your information, profile, comments and friends. Social capital results from sites developed to parse, rank and order original content. Digg, Del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, and a growing number of similar sites determine a hives capital. Social capital creates velocity and speed. As social capital increases network influence grows. More influence means more bees. Here we see the “virtuous cycle” again. The output of one system is the input of another and each pass grows everything in a geometric progression.

Social capital is the land of Gladwell’s mavens. Mavens pan, organize and “shout” (to borrow a Digg term) information. Mavens influence a hive’s course through space and time. Think of bees when they leave their hive searching for a new home. That roiling boil of “bee-ness” moves as one hurtling thing through space prodded along by mavens. The best social networks are movable feasts whose connections grow in virtuous cycles following paths influenced or charted by mavens.

Original Content
Original content is honey. Even hidebound old-line media get this idea. I read a New York Times article recently about Viagra turning ten years old. The original five hundred-word article was quickly dwarfed by more than 3,000 words added in “comments” by readers. Where does article end and comments begin? Such distinctions are meaningless. Just as the network is the computer the “article” is the total thing (500 words + comments). The emergent system started by the New York Times is transformed, manipulated, pulled and pushed by connectors, mavens and salesmen to become a new thing.

Each Gladwell’s group creates original content, but salesmen are original content’s best friends. Think of their promotion as an “Oprah-effect” or the ability to use charisma to vastly increase size and speed of a network’s growth. I lived through an “Oprah-effect” discussed in Real Things Matter 2. Found Objects, the gift company I co-founded, was the first company to sell David Kapel’s Magnetic Poetry Kit (words on magnets most put on their refrigerator). When Katharine Graham gave Magnetic Poetry Kits (MPK) to guests at a dinner party a tsunami of media resulted. The “Pet Rock” of my generation was created. The size of Magnetic Poetry Kit’s hive increased by the square overnight. The virtuous cycle of that Oprah-effect was rapid scale. Graham squares MPK’s hive size. A producer from ABC News reads the Post article. He reports the “Magnetic Poetry Kit story” squaring the size of the hive again. The hive is now self-sustaining. It can square on its own. In short order the hive tips and Magnetic Poetry Kit is on 10,000,000 refrigerators.

Hive Size		Oprah Effect
10		Size of MPK befoe Graham
100		Graham mention squares hive size
10,000		ABC Squares Hive
10,00,000		Hive Squares Itself

Red Maxwell

I met Red on a spring day in Dobbs Ferry, New York six years ago. We were fellow North Carolina marketers on a Chautauqua to meet author Seth Godin. Maureen, in a recent comment about my memory of that day, called Seth “Super Seth.” Everyone, there was about twenty-five marketers from all over, came to upsate New York to work with Seth Godin. We believed in those superpowers.

Have you ever studied something hard such as organic chemistry, advanced calculus or European socialism? For me it was Phenomenology and Existentialism. You would think this would be easy. Things are here (phenomenology) and they suck (existentialism), but nothing is as it seems, nothing is easy. When I fall hopelessly behind I look up and out to see who is getting it. I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I find ways to survive. Find the person whose tracking and ask them to explain Jean Paul Sartre or Martin Heidegger.

If you are thinking your intrepid hero (me), who felt like he was listening to Jean Paul or Martin himself that day in upstate New York, used his Darwinian skills to find who was getting it you would be 100% right. My “getting it” targeting system found two options. Red Maxwell and Tim Storm, owner of FatWallet. Tim created one of the first and most successful “mash-up” sites (FatWallet). Seth loved Tim's business model, site design and concept. That means Tim is SMART. Tim is also a really good guy. Only one problem with Tim as Martin-guide, Fatwallet almost bankrupted my company Found Objects when a “free t-shirt” offer found its way onto Tim's bulletin boards. That is another instructive story about the power of the web and social networks for another day. Fatwallet's almost eradication of my company eliminated Tim from my "helper" radar.

My tracking system locked on Red. Some people who "get it" make you pay for their intelligence. They tolerate your presence because having an audience is important. They will always be the smartest person in the room. I’ve been privileged to know and work with really smart people on occasion. J. Langdon at M&M/Mars, Mary Kay O’Connor at NutraSweet, the artist Jenny Holzer at Found Objects are all smart visionary people who use their intelligence as a blanket of inclusion. Red is one of the most naturally engaging and inclusive people I know.

So I lock on Red early at Seth’s. Red was with two other people from “Design Factory”, an ad agency he co-founded located in Winston-Salem an hour west of my home in Durham. Red’s title was “Creative Director”. One of the other people from Design Factory had a bigger title, cool glasses and a dismissive manner. I love people who work in service industries who dismiss people they meet.

Truly smart people rarely judge anyone. Really smart people are generous and abundant. It is one thing that makes them SMART (duh). They share and want to learn always. No subject and no one is too small. Seth is like this. Red is like this. Craig Newmark, the creator of CraigsList, is like this. J. Langdon who just sold Hickory Farms is like this. Suspending judgment and not labeling people is very Eckhart Tolle cool, very Zen and VERY hard. Try letting the next moment just happen. See how hard it is.

Red is one of those rare people who can help your thinking, strategy, ability to grasp concepts, or whatever in a way that makes you feel better about yourself. Not only does he not extract intellectual cost for his wizardry he wants to be so far behind the curtain you never see or think about him. Your new brain, heart and courage were all increased by magic. Nope, it was Red’s generosity and intelligence pulling levers and pushing buttons as fast as he could.

Today, Red forgot I wrote a recommendation for him on LinkedIn. I am glad he did. Reading my previous recommendation now a year and many miles later I realize it is too trivial. I quoted Star Trek for God’s sake. My LinkedIn recommendation for Red is way too tiny a comment for a man who said simply, “how can I help” when discovering a friend was facing a health challenge. I heard those words from Red. Those words meant more than I can express. If I go up Everest any time soon I will strap myself to three Sherpas and my friend Red Maxell, owner of OnRamp Branding.

P.S.
I asked Red to read my memory of that day in Dobbs Ferry six years ago. Seth didn’t remember the details I wrote. Of course not, he is the thing we were all loaded up to see. He is the Chautauqua. I can selectively remember with the best of them, so I reached out to Red and asked him if I dreamed that day working with Seth Godin. “Of course I remember,” Red wrote me, “we ate Crispy Creams.” Yes we did Red. Yes we did.

Read more about Red Maxwell, Seth Godin and other Internet Makreting leaders at http://ScentTrail.blogspot.com.

Punched in the Face

Someone just posted a comment to this blog threatening to punch me in the face because I wrote an article about Sex and the City. There is a reaction I never would have predicted. The strange comment made me think about the three times I was punched in the face:

* Cessy Borchetta
* Mugged after hockey practice
* Marist Middie

Cessy Borchetta
Cessy was my 8th grade girlfriend at Central Junior High. I can see Cessy as I write this almost forty years later. She wore glasses. She was always peering over her glasses causing her brown hair to fall in her face. She had brown eyes. Eyes that could hold you still and that is no small accomplishment for the eighth grade. She spoke Italian at home with her parents and grandparents. Really tick her off and she would let fly with Italian. You couldn't understand a word even if you spoke Italian. There was nothing boring or calm about Cessy. She would be a challenge for me to understand now, so she was a complete mystery at twelve.

Cessy was more mature than our classmates. She looked like a college freshman. Cessy could get into bars. When you are twelve the ability to get into bars is tantamount to having super powers. I wasn't far behind Cessy physically. I was as tall at twelve as I was ever going to be (5' 7"). I was already shaving. I could just about get into bars.

Why Cessy chose me in the eighth grade is a mystery. I was competing with Matt Marino for her attention. Matt, no relation to Dan, was our quarterback. I played fullback and middle linebacker because a 5' 7" 8th grader who could bench-press 200 pounds scared Holy Hell out of just about every other eighth grader. There is Karma in the world. As large as I was in junior high is how small I was in high school. Three years of doling out punishment stacked against three years of being hit harder than I thought possible. Karma.

Cessy and I were in the hall. I was mumbling something about breaking up. She slapped me dead across my face. Cessy wound that slap up too. She almost did a complete 360. Her unseen hand must have started from her knee. I was stunned into silence. Cessy bent her head to look over her glasses at me for a long five seconds then she twirled on her heels and headed down the hall.

Sometimes a slap in the face wakes you up. Cessy's slap, soon to become 8th grade legend at Central Junior High, woke me up. There was no more discussion of breaking up, at least not for a month or so. I was a better boyfriend, at least for a month or so. Hey it was the 8th grade a month is a very long time. Cessy made her bones with that slap. She left me not long after "The Slap" for, you guessed it, Matt Marino.

Mugged After Hockey Practice
Are you ever amazed you lived to tell the stories of your youth? One day in 9th grade I accepted a ride home from three high school seniors after a late hockey practice at the Greenwich public rink. I wouldn't normally accept a ride, but they told me they knew older brothers of two of my close friends. I had to ride in the back of their hatchback bent over and with my stick and skates poking me. I remember thinking it was no big deal. My house was about five miles from the public rink.

The three seniors ignored me during the ride, but followed directions to my house. Millbrook, where I lived in Greenwich, puts chains up after dark. There is only one way in and a rent-a-cop sits there. I should have known something was up when the seniors said they didn't want to go all the way to my house. They would drop me at one of the chained entrances. Sounded reasonable at the time and they did pull up to the closest chained entrance to my house.

They popped the hatch. I started to back out. I had one foot on the ground, looked in to the car to gather my stick and say thanks and one of the seniors kicked me in the face. I went down on the pavement directly behind the car. I was dazed and confused. I struggled to get up. Someone punched me again just above my right eye. I went down to the pavement again. I remember hearing laughter and taunting. They were laughing at me and taunting each other. At least for a moment no one was hitting me. I stood up. My hands were still at my side. I was so surprised. I backed up into the streetlight and they saw the blood.

Head cuts bleed and that is probably what saved me being beat up further that night. The blood from the cut above my right eye looked bad. The leader said something like, "he's had enough," and they turned in unison and got back in the hatchback. When I got home I told my parents the cut was from hockey and my stick got broken during practice. My dad was skeptical. My mom put me in the car and got me stitched up.

Marist Middie
I played center midfield in club lacrosse at Vassar. Middies are the workmen of a lacrosse team. They move the ball from defense to offense where they usually pass off to "Attack" guys. You put fast guys who can hit and be hit at Midfield and smaller guys who can shoot on Attack. Lacrosse, when played by Hobart, UNC or Duke, has some contact. When you are that good lacrosse is mostly about the ballet of the ball.

Playing club lacrosse at Vassar is different. The ball is on the ground more. There is more contact as you contest for ground balls. There were players at Choate who could do this cool one hand snatch. This is a slick move where you flick the head of the lacrosse stick down pocket turned away from the ball. With a flick of your wrist you flip the stick and snap the ball up into the pocket. This move is hard to do standing still. It was impossible for me to do with guys on either side poking me with sticks. I dogged out our ground balls. I wasn't a flicker.

I was also not afraid to lower a shoulder and convince someone to leave the ball alone. All those years playing football created a false sense of security. When I played lacrosse you wore a flimsy helmet, some arm pads and gloves. My false sense of security came from playing sports with a lot more padding. Except for one hit in one football game as a senior, I got hit much harder playing lacrosse. That is not completely accurate. I hurt more after lacrosse games. The hitting was probably as hard but there was much less protection on a lacrosse field.

One beautiful upstate New York spring day Vassar was playing Marist College and holding our own. There was a good fast middie on the Marist team who was winning as many duels for ground balls as he was losing. I lowered my shoulder and won a loose ball, passed it off to our crease Attackman (the guy who stands right in front of the goal) and he scored. "Good hit," was all the Marist center middie said. I remember that he took his mouth guard out to say it. That should have seemed strange to me.

In the second half I am clear on a loose ball in the Marist side of the field. I have visions of doing the flick. I am concentrating and my head is down. I bend down to give the flick a little extra chance of succeeding and POW the Marist middie comes up under my stick and his helmet hits my chin. The next ten minutes or so I don't remember. I was out cold. I woke up with a bag of ice on my chin and blood streaming down my jersey. The ice wasn't even slowing the blood.

There are no ambulances in club lacrosse. You get your own butt to the doctor. I couldn't drive. A friend drove me to the hospital. The cut was on the right point of my chin. When I took the ice off the skin flapped open like a sail wafting in the breeze. The harried intern warned me that I would probably have to see a surgeon. "What are you," I remember asking. The intern patiently explained that my cut was too deep and in a "bad" place. He would put in stitches but doubted they would hold.

He was right. When I took the stitches out in a week my chin flapped open and started bleeding. Back to the emergency room. This time a different doctor gave me the same message. A plastic surgeon was necessary. He couldn't fix the problem for the long haul. The story of having a Park Avenue plastic surgeon fix my flap will have to wait for another day.

I would leave the person who wanted to punch me in the face for writing about Sex and the City with this note. Get in line. You won't be the first. You will be the fourth. You would be the first to ever want to punch me for words I wrote. Cessy slapped me for words I said. The seniors punched me for fun. The Marist Middie punched me to level my lacrosse Karma. Why exactly do you plan to punch me? For words I wrote. In a way that is kind of cool.

Read more punchable articles at http://ScentTrail.blogspot.com.

Sex and the City Lessons

Sex and the City the movie is, as the Seattle Times said, "for the fans." The movie doesn't break new ground but is a full turn around the park for Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big (Chris Noth). In his book Everything Bad Is Good For You Steven Johnson notes how most current movies and television shows are more complex than Leave It To Beaver or any of the fare we baby boomers grew up with. Contemporary shows have to be more complex, Johnson notes, because they will be watched many more times than, at least back in the day, Leave It To Beaver. Think of the old model. The original episode would run, be put in the can until summer reruns and then retired forever. How many times can we watch the shoes we love? With DVR's, computers and web sites we can watch contemporary creations an almost infinite number of times. Johnson's notes how increased access leads to a need for more than double the complexity. Sex and the City conforms to Johnson's multiple complex thread model.

Several threads mentioned in Sex and the City the movie remain dangling and are only there for fans. The mention of Carrie's almost wedding to Aidan that took two seasons not to happen is left hanging with a single mention. If you've never seen the series it will be hard to understand Samantha's angst about a committed loving though sexless (at least for Samantha) relationship. You may not understand why Miranda is wrapped so tight or Charlotte so perky. The Sex and the City movie assumes you know each character's back-story. Short of that, you will never understand Carrie's assault on Mr. Big with flowers in the street (trying not to spoil the major plot point here).

I've been a fan of Sex and the City for a long time. The writing has been crisp, more so in the series than in this over two-hour movie, and these women's characters are always well drawn. I've learned things from Sex and the City (movie and series) including these five lessons. Think of these five lessons as guides for guys who would like to have a clue:

• Women are different
• Fashion Is Foreplay
• Packs are important
• Pacts are important
• Remember the 3 R's (Romance, Romance and Romance)
  

Sex and the City: Lesson 1 - Women Are Different
Women talk about EVERYTHING. Men discuss almost nothing. The subtext of every Sex and the City conversation, no matter how banal, is really about knitting relationships tighter. There is no wasted motion. Every comment and subtext exists to reinforce the love they feel for each other. Love is expressed. Love is created. Love is cherished.

Sex and the City: Lesson 2 - Fashion Is Foreplay
Ever noticed how every guy-oriented action movie has a "MacGyver" moment? MacGyver, a famous 80's television show staring Richard Dean Anderson, moments are procedurals that explain how the hero saves the day. These moments are so predictable and defining that Saturday Night Live has taken to lampooning them as "MacGruber".

Fashion catwalks are to chick flicks what MacGyver moments are to the action genre. Sex and the city has several versions of the "fashion catwalk" theme:

1. There is Carrie's pre-move closet catwalk as the four friends take three days to pack her couture treasures
2. The street fashions are, as usual, eye popping and very New York
   
3. There is the wedding dress catwalk for Carrie's Vogue shoot
4. There is the actual Fashion Week catwalk attended by all four friends

Men, catwalk moments may bore to tears, but ignore them at your peril. Just as MacGyver moments quicken your pulse catwalk moments speed hers. Yawn here and pay later.

Sex and the City: Lesson 3 - Packs Are Important
Charlotte's mother-bear warning to Mr. Big in the street in an important tip. If you love a woman and her friends hate you good luck with that. Lose the friends and you lose your girlfriend, wife or partner. There is no faster way to lose an entire pack than leaving a member of the pack at the alter. Don't do that no matter how much panic is setting in if you ever want to have a relationship with any of the women involved. Do this and your ban could last across generations, be blogged about and bad words said about you, in these times we live in, worldwide in a matter of moments.

Sex and the City: Lesson 4 - Pacts Are Important
Men, do what you say you will do. When Mr. Big says of the too expensive New York apartment, "I got it" you could hear very woman in the theater swoon. When he didn't get out of his car at the church he was burning in effigy. From hero to monster in less than a half an hour. Why? Mr. Big didn't do what he said he was going to do. Steve doesn't do what he said he was going to do when he cheats on Miranda. Smith, Samantha's boyfriend, doesn't deliver on the sexual front. Men, do what you say and, when in doubt, do it again. Pacts are important and must be kept.

Sex and the City: Lesson 5 - Remember The 3R's (Romance, Romance, Romance)
Big mistake when Mr. Big says, "sounds like we should get married" during an "adult" conversation with Carrie. Marriage is not a merger or partnership. Well it may be, but it will be nothing if you don't drop down on your creaky knee, look up at her like a puppy and say the words, "will you marry me." All clichés are true and the need for this one knee proposal is one you adhere to. This is another "ignore at your peril" thing. Drop down, grab a knee and rehearse "will you marry me" to the point where there is no hitch in your voice and no flicker in your eyes.