Messages In A Bottle

Received a nice text comparing ScentTrail to messages in a bottle today. Never thought of ScentTrail Marketing that way, but see it now. ScentTrail tells my story. My writing is messy, a tad chaotic, fun, sad, happy and an ongoing search for a personal truth and meaning. I used to think of personal truth as individual and isolated. The quest seemed zero sum. Personal truth came only at a steep cost (usually to someone else).

Then I got cancer and hit fifty. Either one of those events changes you. Both events happening in close proximity resets everything. Truth is a mirage, a momentary illusion brought on by life’s only truth – change. If change is truth then immutable fanatical oppressive rightness is ego’s arrogance. Truth happens. Truth happens but it never seems true while it is happening. When, on a Friday at 4:00 several years ago, Hammering Hank called to say I shared more than a birthday with my father, I had his cancer too, I remember thinking three things;

• I need more time.
• I should have taken more risks.
• At least I won’t run out of money.

These were knee jerk reactions. Sometimes your knees jerk in helpful ways sometimes not. Today I am thinking more deeply about each reaction thanks to my “message in a bottle” text:

Need More Time
Time is relevant. You don’t get to do things twice. Later we think how different we would have acted. Nope, later is later. This kind of post hoc analysis is torture. We do what we do. We do what we did. Decisions are always made now. Looking back saying how much we would change a decision is a way of invalidating life. This kind of denial smacks of Kubler-Ross’s first stage of grief. Yes denial is more than a river in Egypt. There is always exactly the right amount of time.

Take More Risks
I left Choate to attend Vassar, married at twenty-five for love, left corporate America at thirty-five and started a company using my 401K as seed capital. The risk glass is half full (lol). I didn’t follow a typical start up route moving from one fledgling company to another. I’ve met start up nomads and respect them. I don’t envy the tough bark they’ve have to grow. No I’m glad I’ve followed this path as strange and seemingly random has its been (Martin Marty Smith on LinkedIn).

Not Running Out of Money
I’ve saved a little over the years. I made money early in my career working for M&M/Mars. I used to say M&M’s hires one person for two people’s job and pays a salary and a half. Everyone wins. I didn’t want to just keep working for “the Man” even if he made the best candy in the country. I wanted to create something. It was worth risking every dime to create Found Objects (that link goes to the archive showing the first web site I ever created). Then I lost every dime. Then I got fired from the company my savings started. Being unemployed and broke was scary and motivating. If I was going to eat and have a roof over head I needed a job.

As my friend T just told me, “then God sent the job.” At the bottom, when there was little gas in my tank and less money in my account I met Peggy, Susan and Phil and learned about The Sinclair Institute. Peggy and Phil built a company teaching adults how to have better sex. The idea for the company was intriguing and its product unique. Phil was also an author and one of the first to practice “social marketing” on a global scale. Phil had to create a successful company to do what he really loved – helping people in far off lands. Phil built a company to give it away. Phil, Peggy and Susan were people I could learn things from. Turned out Sinclair’s Better Sex Video Series was too little too late to save my marriage, but I could see how open honest information about sex could help others. I signed on.

When Hammering Hank informed of my ten-year life span, most patients with Chronic Lympocytic Leukemia live ten years, I started mentally shuffling my life’s cards. If there were only ten years I better start living. Good idea but not the way life works. When you hear cancer and your name in the same sentence you think of your death and you bargain. Remember Kubler-Ross’s five stages:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

(in a book I read but couldn’t understand at Vassar, On Death and Dying)

I cycled back and forth morning a lost life, the one in my head but all to rarely lived. In my head life and the people were always gifts, precious beyond any monetary proxy and that is saying something considering I grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. After a major diagnosis your life’s time frame is thrown off. Your life doesn’t pass before you in an instant. Instead it rolls by like an old home movie. You see pictures in your head. Graduations from Choate and Vassar, marriage, favorite people such as Stuart Brownstein, Charlie Purdy, Mike Wood, Doug Wheeler, Mary Kay O’Connor, Jim Kempland, Kevin Molidor and Tom O’Brien. I remembered friends such as Stuart Taft, Eric Marcus, Ray Galvin, Billy Sullivan and George Mandes. I remember past girlfriends such as Lori Chaplin, Sue Rush, Zandy Hillis, Dot Stites, Lisa Zurn and Jessie Jewitt.

Thinking about your death is not a bad idea. It provides perspective. One thing I came to after almost giving up the ghost (Read Why Are Republicans Trying To Kill Me? For more on why I consider every day in the bonus now) is all of life is in every moment. There is no special “cancer life” to be lived. My mind hasn’t grasped this realization yet, may mot as I write this, but it is an important realization. People say you should live every moment as if it is your last. This is not realistic. You have to go to the grocery store, dry cleaner and office whether this moment is your last or not. Some magical thinking did occur such as:

• Work

Do what you love and do whatever you are doing with love.

If you can’t bring the love to what you are doing, do something else. I think leaving a job is a little like leaving a relationship (read my Case Against Divorce). Often we leave job’s thinking leaving will change who we are. We change an external thing thinking it will change internal things. Take it from someone who almost died, life doesn’t work like that.

We are pattern making and pattern recognition machines. We repeat our “love” or “work” patterns with some regularity. And at each repetition we are amazed when results turn out the same. I love people because we, believe me I include myself in this tribe, are so STUPID. Too harsh by half, but leaving something doesn’t change who we are. The only thing we can’t leave, despite commercials to the contrary, is our selves. The harsh inner voice honed from years of criticism moves with us.

• Love

Love Yourself, Love Others, Love Everyone.

People are more important than any “thing” and achievement all too often is a thing. Running after carrots you will never catch leads to disappointment, anger and regrets. Achievement is important. Achievement is how we build things, but no one achieves ANYTHING alone anymore ever. Life is too complicated. The lone genius is myth so don’t fall into its trap. Always let credit flow away from you. A job well done with a team you care about is reward enough.

• Time

Time is almost too precious to give to humans.

We take time for granted. We misuse time. Any abuse of anything or anyone including self is a misuse of time. Maybe God is a time cop who creates things like cancer to punish those who’ve abused time. I took so much of my life for granted. Saying I wasn’t living my life is a vast understatement. It is almost impossible to understand and adjust to a special moment. A better strategy is treat every moment as special. Anyone in those special moments with you will feel your appreciation and recognition. Nothing is mundane. Nothing is routine. All of life is in every moment no matter how trying and innocuous it seems. This is the close as I can come to, “Live every moment as if it were your last.”

• Honesty

Honesty is when internal voice and external actions are in harmony.

We think we are apart from others. We hear this voice in our heads and we see “them” and “us”. No such separation exists ever. CBS Sunday Morning discussed how a lawyer and a homeless man started a book club. Always care about what someone else is experiencing, thinking and feeling. Your internal voice and mine are chanting the same Koan’s in our inner-ear. We want to understand life’s meaning. We want to know why we are here. We want to love and be loved.

• Redemption

We are all sinners and I don’t mean this in a religious way.

We fail our aspirations because if we didn’t we would be God. We are allowed to touch God’s face when we see flaws and aren’t crushed by them. When all of life is in every moment, redemption is more than possible. Redemption is our ability to escape our ego’s earthly bonds and help a homeless man read a book, an Indian couple plan a family ( as Phil does at DKT International) and getting my old, fat butt across this great country on a long bicycle in 2010. We redeem our life when we care about something other than ourselves. EVERYONE wants to experience altruism so complete our actions and the greater good are one and the same.

I met Nicholas Sparks, author of Message In A Bottle, at a book signing in Durham more than ten years ago. Nicholas created himself. When publishers rejected his work he found other work. He kept writing. His first book, The Notebook, written in his spare time, was serendipitously plucked out of a publisher’s “slush pile” by literary agent Theresa Park. Park secured a $1,000,000 advance for the book. Nicholas was between The Notebook's film release and Message In A Bottle's film when he read passages from Message at what was then the only Durham Barnes and Noble. Sparks took care. He answered questions well beyond his reading time. He shared his story even as he may have cut the crust off the tough rejection sandwich he had to eat before Ms. Park decided the world needed romance again. Nicholas wasn’t attended by anyone that night years ago. He was doing what he loved and it showed. It is a great honor someone reading my blog compared it to messages in a bottle. I can only hope....

Thanks,

Martin Marty Smith

The Case For Divorce

(Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970)

After being divorced five years I wrote Martin's Case Against Divorce because much of what happened seemed capricious, hurtful and expensive. My goal was to help anyone contemplating divorce understand why they may not be doing what they think they are doing. After discussing a friend’s troubled marriage I realize Martin’s Case Against Divorce may be a fool’s errand.

Divorce has its own well-worn path. There probably isn’t 10% difference between your divorce and mine. Common elements include:

If she initiates…

• A request for “space”.
• A suddenly strengthened support network of other women (and sometimes gay men).
• Vicious labeling and blaming.
• Planning
  

If he initiates….

• Increasing remoteness and less physical and mental presence.
• Unexplained anger and easy overreactions.
• Vicious labeling and blaming.
• Planning.
  

Excuse my French, but this is all so much BS. Divorce is about what others think more than anything else. If you live in this moment, are centered, balanced and complete why would you divorce? A: You wouldn’t. Granted, if you were all of those things you may not have married in the first place, but you would certainly not divorce in the second. Yes I know if you were all of those things you would be chanting with the other monks.

My thoughts today aren’t for monks. Our modern world is brutal to humans. We mash each other up and spit each other out like chewing gum. We believe our salvation always come from the next piece of gum. We run on an infinite hamster’s wheel.

Life never has to be the way it is. It can always change. Divorce is seen as a viable change agent. What you are changing? Divorce in-and-of-itself changes nothing. Not exactly true since a lot of your hard earned money will be in someone else’s pocket (lawyers, therapists and you will pay for many dinners with consoling “friends”). Forgive me for my money obsession. I am the son of a Wall Street investment banker so I tend to yardstick everything to its eventual impact on money. Irony is my father never shared a single stock tip or piece of financial advice. He trained his family by example instead of direct coaching. If I grew up the son of a Yogi I would relate everything to spiritual peace and enlightenment (lol). Henceforth whenever I say "money" you think "spiritual peace and enlightenment" (lol).

You can’t divorce yourself. This sounds trite but I bet a vast majority of divorces are escape attempts. Western capitalist societies believe in external things. We feel sick so we take medicine, go shopping or play tennis. We do things. It is who we are.

Eastern societies look inward. You don’t find Buddha outside in furious activity you find spirit inside from meditation, contemplation and peace. Eastern societies are better at letting things be, removing judgment and eliminating labels. I admire such an approach even as I know how hard it is to resist our culture’s false idols. Too often we are mules following a carrot we will never catch, a meal we will never eat.

Divorce is a favorite unreachable carrot. Its renewing promise is so laughably hollow it is right up there with flimsy logic used to pitch extended warranties on electronics. Renewal NEVER comes from some external event. You don’t become a different person because you are not married. You are the same person the day of your divorce as you were the day you were married.

Many people change during and after divorce. Serendipitous conditioning rewards the wrong thing. Divorce didn’t change you. The hard work you did on who you are and what you want to be when you grow up created change. Spirit work always carries rewards. Don’t assign benefit to the wrong action.

“Once I understood myself better I didn’t want to put up with her bullshit anymore,” a friend told me years ago. I was commenting on how much more in touch he seemed. Statements like his, and every divorce is replete with them, mean he had more work to do. If you are so self-deluded you don’t have the presence, the awareness of this moment, to divorce. Let me explain this problem another way. If you divorce without being in touch with who you really are WHO are you divorcing? No judge can separate you from yourself. That person, who you really are, will be the first to greet you on the day AFTER your divorce.

Victims have things done to them. When I was a young psychology student at Vassar we learned shock a rat enough for no clear reason and soon they will just sit down and wait for death. This “learned helplessness” is not a figment of the rat’s imagination. Those poor rats were just in the wrong psychology lab at the wrong time (lol). We believe we are helpless rats. We are never helpless rats. People can make different choices it only SEEMS like we can’t.

Conditioning can feel unbreakable. Tonight I suggested doing something unpredictable to my friend. I was giving advice I couldn’t follow during my divorce. My friend couldn’t follow it either. Human prisons are always of our own making. We are free it just doesn’t feel like it.

My friend doesn’t feel free. Freedom is a spiritual state not a physical one. Remember we are good at doing things. Car companies, for years, understood our desire for freedom and would gladly sell it to us. The reason car companies are hurting, besides their own stupidity, is we wised up. Cars don’t equal freedom. Freedom equals freedom. Freedom's source is hard work getting to know who we really are and what we want and don’t want. I don’t want to prolong life at the cost of it. I don’t want to be dishonest. I don’t want to hurt anyone.

Here is divorce’s ultimate irony. Divorce requires knowing yourself so well that if you are anywhere close to such knowledge divorce isn’t even on your radar. People who divorce are projecting. They attempt the impossible – leaving themselves by leaving another. No one ever “fixes” a marriage. You can’t fix a marriage. There is nothing broken in the marriage. Let me restate that, there is never anything broken in any marriage.

There also isn’t anything “broken” in either of you. If your request for space is a sincere desire to do the hard internal work necessary to get to know yourself so well divorce ceases to exist (as option not practical state controlled robbery) then find a way to create “space”. If your desire for space is to harm another human, your partner, in some vengeful desire for retribution then you have bigger issues than this blog post can help. I bet 99% is lost retribution and 1% results from the kind of work discussed here.

It is easy to recognize divorces who fall in the 99% unaware category. Phrases such as, "loveless marriage," "abusive (in most cases)", "asshole," "not in love with you anymore," and my personal favorite "I may not have ever loved you" are assassination attempts. When someone says, "I am on a journey finding some things and missing others and not sure I can get there with you or that you want to get there with me," then you may be close to the 1% of people who should divorce.

When you look for spiritual answers in material (i.e. external) things you will always be disappointed. One of my favorite movie quotes is in The Princess Bride:

Buttercup: You mock my pain.
Man in Black: Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

Divorce is pain too and often, a useless pain. Useless pains are when no one moves any closer to spiritual peace. Your job, and this is a little mission impossible, is find yourself, find yourself so well divorce is a word that starts with d.

Good luck,

Marty

P.S. One Favor. If you are Hell bent to divorce buy and read Eckhart Tolle's masterwork The Power of Now first. I don't have a dog in this hunt, but this book saved my life. I recognize such attribution may be serendipitous since I read it just before chemotherapy (a word that always cracks me up for its innocent sound masking vicious intent), but grant me this one favor and I will return the favor. "Someday, and this day may never come....." insert Godfather quote here. I am not even going to link to Amazon or Echart Tolle's site. Nope, you are going to have to get there on your own, but please get there. Even if you get the BIG D reading NOW will help.

P.S.S. I opened with a favorite piece of art, Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson. Learn more about this incredible artwork and artist on Wikipedia: Spiral Jetty

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Why Do Republicans Want To Kill Me?

I’m a good guy. I grew up in Texas where my dad, a rabid Republican, taught me to shoot, to appreciate a beautiful flat, brown scraggy state wearing cowboy hats and ornate pointed boots. I love my mother and try not to speak ill of anyone, so it is confusing when people I don’t know are so crazed about killing me.

I am fifty-one and a half and I have cancer. Feel alright now, but almost two years ago chemo coursed through my veins and I almost became a hospital statistic. Chemotherapy, now there is an interesting and benign sounding name, is administered in a communal setting at UNC Hospital. You are never more alone, I remember thinking, than when you are receiving chemo by yourself. Looking around my “chemo in the round” room everyone had a wife, brother, son or daughter attending, holding hands and speaking soft words of encouragement. My brother couldn’t see his brother as sick. He dropped me off to return six hours later.

Chemo is nothing if not efficient. There is a tall silver poll with lots of wires and a blue computer. Above the computer a nurse hangs bags whose contents are so precious if you had a trunk full of this liquid you would have beach money for life. Every so often your computer decides it is time for a new drug. It beeps and new toxic poison heads into your body. I forgot a key point. The first thing your kind nurse does is knock you for such a loop you can hardly remember your name. You are non compis mentis. I wish I could tell you these are GOOD DRUGS. They are good because you don’t remember much, but they are not fun.

So there I am loopy and scared. Suddenly my machine beeped a routine. ET wasn’t phoning home. An hour into my first round of chemo and the real chemo was starting. I started to shake and shiver. I played football as a kid, my dad was my first coach, so I tucked my chin into my hands determined to tough it out. “So this is chemo,” I remember thinking, “It sucks.” Within seconds I was seizing and passing out. My life didn’t pass before me. Somehow you know. I was dying. It felt like I fell down a hill. Everyone who could help me get up was way up the hill. I was falling further and further down faster and faster. I was dying.

My fellow travelers, my fellow cancer patients and their families, started yelling and screaming. One lady got up and walked over to the far part of our community room and, placing her hand on a nurse’s forearm, drug the nurse from her coffee conversation to my loudly alarming poll. You know how close you came by how much panic you see in a your nurse's eyes. My laconic nurse showed panic. Her wide eyes and fast hands were, I was sure, going to be the last thing I saw. Nope, not going to be that easy. Removing the drug causing my allergic reaction was the second thing that saved my life that day. The first was the protest waged by fellow patients. Strangers, people I would never see again, saved my life.

Now strangers want to kill me. Anyone who says they are satisfied with their health insurance hasn’t been sick yet. Once you are sick and labeled, branded really, then let’s talk about how satisfied you are with insurance that could evaporate if you lose your job, get too sick or blow through your plan's cap. BTW, losing your job becomes much more likely when you are sick. My company, thankfully, has been supportive and great. Cancer has few certainties. One thing I guarantee is for about a year you will have much less energy. For several months you wake up to someone punching you in the stomach. Once your stomach mends the fatigue sets in just as you are trying to get back in the full swing at work. Cancer is the fight of your life.

Think about being in the fight of your life when suddenly a stop is called in the action. You go to your corner. Someone you’ve never met before starts to debate strategy. This interloper is not a doctor or even a fight doctor; he is your insurance carrier. He informs you, due to pounding in round one, you now have a pre-existing condition and damage from any body punch is not covered. They will cover head shots. They will cover head shots for another round, but, as time goes on, you will probably lose all of your insurance. Any treatment will have to come out of your pocket.

What would you do? Would you continue to fight or throw in the towel? You would be within fighter’s rights to quit. You signed to fight one fight and now you are fighting two. Either one could kill you so it becomes a true Sophie’s Choice.

I am not articulate enough to explain how much stress is added to an already stressful situation by worries about insurance. I’ve worked hard and have saved, but my last name is Smith not Gates. My three days of chemo at UNC costs somewhere north of $50,000. I say “somewhere north” because who can figure out a hospital bill. I received my first bill within ten days of almost dying. I remember going to the movies the first week after chemo and I couldn’t make change. Imagine trying to decipher a hospital bill when you can’t figure change at the movies.

Hospital bills are the #1 source of personal bankruptcy in our country. I added up the hours I received treatment and divided by $50,000 to see what my hourly treatment rate was. $2,777 an hour is what it costs to receive 3 days of chemo at UNC. You tell me how long your savings will last paying such a bill? What if you hit your policy’s $1,000,000 cap, set at a time when a million dollars was a lot of money. Set at a time when a hospital didn’t charge $3,000 an hour for care. Here is a scary fact. At $2,777 an hour, you will receive 15 days treatment before your $1,000,000 cap is gone. Now how “satisfied” are you with your current health plan?

Satisfaction is the wrong question asked the wrong way. The real issue is control and believe me you ”satisfied with our current health plan” people you have NONE. “I have insurance,” you think sitting snug as a bug in rug. Like all of us, you have insurance under our current system UNTIL YOU DON’T. If you can make it to 65, or whatever the age becomes, you will receive the only insurance that can’t be revoked – Medicare - a government plan. I've been an entrepreneur and capitalist long enough to know NO insurance company wants any piece of me. Insurance is the ultimate ponzi scheme. As long there is more money coming in than going out everything is cool. When withdrawals exceed contributions care is cut. Once you cut care you can cut people. You aren't killing people. You are just manipulating numbers on a sheet. Complaining about Medicare cuts when people like me could die because we are too rich to receive free treatment and too poor to pay $2,777 an hour for very long is unseemly at least and selfish murder at most.

If we don’t stop run away health care costs any plan, including the one you have now, will fail. That is important enough to repeat. If we don’t reform our health practices no insurance will cover you.

Here is another shocker. We die. I recognize the crazed eyes and rabid dog look of some denouncing health care reform. Dying is scary, but no insurance; no health plan will prevent our last battle. We all want to die with dignity not penniless and homeless after paying medical bills. Since we share this fear, it seems strange we can’t agree on how to discuss solutions. Perhaps if we changed context. For example, if I asked my mother, “Mom is it worth giving up something small so I can live,” after she asked for more data on “something small” (lol) she would say sure. Give up $50 or $100 to help insure 46,000,000 people? Where do I send my check?

Death panels crack me up. Only someone who has NOT faced a mortal wound gets worked up over death panels. Here is another newsflash, death panels exist. When I sat with my oncologist and we discussed what I would and would not do (would do chemo-light would not do chemo-heavy) we conducted a “death panel”. He brought statistics and information. I listened carefully and parsed as well as I could. We made some decisions. I wouldn’t spend a year undergoing chemo everyday even if it killed every cancer cell in my body. It seemed a crazy way to spend a year, possibly one tenth of what would be left of my life (average lifespan with CLL is 10 years). A short course seemed to offer as much LIFE as a long course. Death panel sounds all Soylent Green and scary. Death is scary. No matter what political party you vote being here is better than not being here.

Yet another agreement (lol). We are in this together. I love my Republican father even as he becomes unhinged at death panels, the money we would have to spend and other strange stuff I can’t keep up with. My father and I share cancer. I have the same Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia as my father. In my father’s case his CLL was discovered in a routine physical when he was 65. This is the “normal” way CLL is found. My CLL popped up at 48 possibly because I also have Multiple Sclerosis. There is some thought my MS treatments, something that reduced my body’s immune response, caused my CLL to show up early. My cure may have killed me and that is ALWAYS the risk. My father is in his 11th year and his white count, the thing that spirals out of control and kills leukemia patients, was better than mine. My prayer is my father NEVER has to go through what I did two years ago.

Yes I am a two-time winner and one of only a handful of people in the world with both health challenges (cancer and MS). I am not bitter, depressed or upset…..at least not anymore (lol). Life is too short to waste time on useless anger. Maybe someone could remind a screaming protester the “life is too short” lesson. I don’t want to die even as I understand its presence. I’ve made peace with death before dishonor. If I can’t be who I am, do the things I enjoy; I won’t prolong life through expensive treatment. BUT, I don’t want to die because I lost my insurance, my savings ran out and I couldn’t receive treatment that might help me make 60. Health care reform protesters PLEASE don’t kill me for no good reason. Listen to what it will take to save me because some day soon you will be me. Strangers saved me once I hope they will do so again.

P.S. I don’t care what our solution is called. Call it MIRACLE, public, private, communist, capitalist, Buddhist, Christian or whatever as long as I can concentrate on getting well and not stress about how to pay for getting well. Let’s all agree to fight one fight at a time. Our “system” has to change or no one will have insurance and even our Sophie’s Choices will be gone.

Peace,

Martin

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BMW = Marketing Zombie Killer

Marketing is changing. Bearings are lost and some companies stagger stiff legged into an uncertain future. Easy to become undead in a time when old ways are killed in an instant. Speed kills. Speed kills marketing and companies. Some companies are getting it. Some unlikely companies are getting it. Car companies generally are more zombie than zombie killer as I noted in my recent Marketing Zombie: Volvo post.

BMW Zombie Killer
BMW is the exception. BMW is finding ways to tell a unique story about a subject we were certain NO unique stories could ever be told again. Cars have lost joy, magic and mystery. We know our sexual powers are not vested in metal. We know our ability to be complete isn't wrapped up in the new model year. Days when millions in advertising equated cars with freedom are gone. This message, the truth of our moving on, hasn't reached Detroit.

Cars as expensive utility wagons seduced Detroit because of profits. Drivers were seduced because of our need for security in an insecure world. Wrapping four tons of metal around us felt secure until oil did its inevitable dance toward $5.00 a gallon. Our betrayal was simple geographical destiny. We don't own the means of our addiction. Our crack dealers live in deserts, cash our checks and believe in global viruses capable of wiping ancient cultures out, or, perhaps worse, carrying enforced modernism.

Our dealers, like all dispensaries, show disdain and distrust for the so easily addicted. Our mutual magical thinking preserves the idea there will be more dinosaurs. News flash, there won't be one more T-Rex, brontosaurus or saber-toothed tiger. BMW skirts this issue beautifully in their Expressions of Joy campaign. BMW markets beauty, motion and art. Their Expression of Joy campaign in magical slight of hand pulling a rabbit out of what we were sure was a dead hat. In an earlier post I shared why business and art are merging (Art is Business Is Art). BMW's Expression of Joy shares this belief and shows just what a few million dollars, a talented artist, a cool car and some paint can do.

See BMW Expression of Joy Web Site


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Free Marketing In Long Tail World

Free AT BarCampRDU 2009
Came home from a well attended, informative and well run 4th BarCamp at Red Hat offices in Raleigh on Saturday August 8th and created a slide deck of key points from our morning brainstorm about Chris Anderson's books Free and The Long Tail.

FREE Marketing In Long Tail World Link

Martin's SlideShare Presentations

Free Marketing In Long Tail World

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Write Great Web Product Copy

Web Product Copy
As a Director of E-Commerce I search for great writers. Our web sites need articles, copy explaining who we are and great product copy. The hardest web copy to write, by far, is product copy. I don't subscribe to the idea web copy must be short and bullet points ridden. I hate reading poorly formatted lousy copy online, but, like most of us, I read great writing no matter where it happens (bathroom stalls for example). Solve the problem, writing quality, don't treat symptoms such as impatience with reading on a monitor.

Writing Web Product Copy
One thing about having "Director" in your job title is you have to explain what you want to others. Explaining always helps. It is like doing something for the first time all over again (to quote Yogi Berra). Here is what I shared about writing great web product copy with a freelance writer today:

Online Product Copy

• Start: Pop Culture Reference
Use pop culture references to create a sense of "knowable mystery". Pop culture is easy to build on or play off. This also helps create a sense of something known and understood before introducing a completely new thing - our product. Customer may not know our products, but they easily relate to and understand pop culture or Renaissance culture, or the 1950's or the sixties if comparison reference is common. Key is open with something customers understand.

• First Paragraph: Play off Pop Culture Reference
Play off the pop culture reference to build similarity or contrast. Similarity if the pop culture reference is consistent with our product’s benefits. I prefer contrast, or partial contrast, allowing some play with and some against the opening pop culture reference. We say, "This new thing is a little like that thing you already know but different in these ways" by contrasting the first paragraph with our opening pop example. Contrast builds credibility and trust in our site and may be a little easier for most to understand faster.

• Include Customer Reviews
Friends are the only sales people left. We are so "oversold" we only trust friends and other "like us" to make recommendations. Web sites MUST avoid the trap of recommending their own products. Quoting reviews and using language similar to reviews adds legitimacy, WE, our web site staff, are not SELLING we are just sharing.

• Tell the product’s story
  
When telling a product's story include as many intimate details as possible. What is the product’s unique selling proposition (USP), who created it and why are important "intimate details". It is impossible to share too much information when telling a product's story since each detail is a brick in what should become a strong wall.

• Create global knowledge metaphors
Build understanding of the new thing, our products, from common understanding about well known things. Cliche, stereotypes, urban legend and myth are useful ways to tap into a collective unconscious. Examples of "global knowledge": all cliches are true, dogs lick themselves because they can and red is a "hot" color.

• Finish Up Strong
Tie everything together. I like to repeat key phrases to create a sense of scentTrail, the “I get it” moment. Find a way to tie all of the product copy themes together in the last few sentences to finish up strong.

Hope these ideas help you write great web product copy. If you would like a link to copy we wrote after developing these rules email martinsellingzoe(at)aol. If you have web copy writing tips or tricks please share in a comment.

Martin

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Books for Soldiers

I can't imagine reading where our soldiers are stationed. I can't imagine doing anything other than being scared you know what-less. Our soldiers are brave men and women who can READ in places I would be under the bed asking when it is over. That being the case, seems like sending a few books is the least we can do. Books for Soldiers takes a little work to understand what to do, but it will tell you what our men and women in uniform want to read and how to have your shipment get to them. Check it out.

Books for Soldiers