Time to start dressing the part.

Ten months ago, I decided to start dressing like a grown-up, you know, suit jackets, tailored trousers, leather-soled shoes, ties, etc. It just hit me one day. I was tired of the never ending "jeans + something" look, and my job had moved from the cloistered world of creative professional to the business and strategy side of things.

Anyway, in addition to the numerous personal changes this effort has entailed, which could be the subject of other posts, I have discovered much of interest on the business side of things, such as:

• We are in the groundswell of an "authenticity and tradition" trend in clothes, the importance of which extends beyond lapel widths and country of origin concerns. Craftsmanship and micro-merchandising are in full swing.
• The polo/khaki and T-shirt/denim movements have peaked and are ripe for replacement.
• Online communities and self-publishing make it easy for people to find mentors, which in turn can have significant impact in a small group of devotees. This points to a failure of mass merchants and provides an interesting opportunity for them.
• From a brand perspective, spend your time with the few than trying to convert the many.
• Print/Traditional media is not dead. Not by a long shot.

More to come.

Resources/Discoveries
Put This On
Mistah Wong's Brog
A Continuous Lean
Custom shirts from J. Hillburn
Esquire's Handbook of Style
Details' Men's Style Guide
The Suit
Herringbone
Howard Yount
Kent Wang

A primer for all product design from a supposedly passe industry.

Adrian von Hooydonk, BMWs design director, discussing the new 5 series Gran Turismo.

Replace BMW and cars with any other product or service category, and you have a succinct list of guidelines for today's world.

7:25
Marketing is more about story telling, because Life has become more about experiences than collecting objects or things.

9:52
People are treating themselves in more private, internal ways.

10:45
A vehicle that encourages social interactions and provides luxury...without screaming it.

11:03
Storytelling and narrative a bigger part of the marketing for all BMW models.

11:57
People like to surround themselves with distinct, individual choices.

13:45
Speed of change is greater in Asia, and it deserves greater focus.

16:00
Despite the global reach of the brand, the BMW customer is motivated by the same core desires and values.

20:00
Regarding global competition, you're only as good as your last product or design. But reaching BMW's level of expertise and quality takes many years. Heritage of quality is a key ingredient.

From the archives: Too many notes, Mozart.

[Written 10/05]

Too much information, running through my brain.
Too much information, driving me insane.
--The Police, 1982

A close friend of mine emailed me recently:

I have 5 email addresses. As of today I have 5,140 songs on my iPod, and I'm considering purchasing a second one. I have Tivo, which is now stacked with shows that I consider interesting and worth watching. I subscribe to 4 podcasts, 3 magazines and 2 newspapers. I send and receive a minimum of 80 work related emails per day--often more than 100. I have voicemail at work, on my mobile and at home.

Your blog is a current of wind in the hurricane that is media in my (and your readers’) lives. Of course it's important to me, but how can we get it noticed above the din of the everyday?

Admittedly, my buddy is a little obsessive/compulsive and suffers from a seriously short attention span. But he's also a prototypical media connoisseur and gadget hound who is drowning under the wave of writing and music available to us all.

Now the blog-savvy smart ass will simply smirk and say, “Dude. RSS. Bloglines.” True enough, But I think he brings up something larger:

We're choking on information.

It’s one of those subversive facts about the Internet: we all supposed to feel so “empowered” because we have all these facts at our disposal. Because we can make our voice heard. And don’t get me wrong, it’s great, the most important invention since the printing press.

But at the same time, my resources far outstrip my time. Sure I can check seven to ten websites and blogs to de-spin something, but it's not practical. Instead, this gnawing doubt that I'm missing out follows me around like a stray dog. And I find myself diving deeper into the Long Tail, mostly discovering new things that match my current tastes and beliefs.

(Fortuntely, Long Tail filters like Amazon, CDBaby and Technorati present the staggering wealth of information in small, suggested chunks. Otherwise I'd go completely bonkers.)

Here's the thing: There are thousands of whip-smart people out there writing blogs that I’d love to read, that I "need" to read, even. But I choose not to sacrifice that much of my time. I’m not a superhero like Mr. Scoble, nor did I buy a ticket on the Cardboard Spaceship.

Marketers and pundits keep telling us that this smorgasbord of choice is a great thing. I'm not so sure. The other day at the grocery store I counted 23 different flavors of single-serving Odwalla juice. 23! And not one of them was what I wanted— plain old apple. As I write this, Technorati is watching 8,479,411 blogs and tracking 1,019,959,253 links. It boggles the mind.

Studies have shown that when confronted with too many choices, we’re apt to do nothing. Or if we do make a decision, we wonder if it was the “best” choice and feel less satisfied about the whole damn thing. Seth Godin talks a little about it here .

I don’t have a specific solution, except what I described in The wisdom of las ondas. Hugh MacLeod over at Gaping Void once blogged something to the effect of “Stop worrying about the technology. Concentrate on trust instead.”

He was talking about marketer anxiety, but I think it applies to dealing with our mega-networked life as well. Let's stop worrying so much about all the information we're missing. Let's concentrate on what we choose to enjoy instead.

Web goodies: Monocle, Instapaper and Quirky

Interesting finds from this week:

Wondering about the nature of what you do for money? Become a member of Fora.TV and hear what Alain de Botton has to say.

I spent 30 minutes at Monocle and barely scratched the surface. Amazing. Check out this bit on a new shop called The School of Life. (Thank you Poppa L.)

Instapaper may help solve the whole "too many bookmarks, too many computers" problem by just taking the bookmark out of the equation (Thank you, Noah Brier...via Twitter, no less!)

If you've ever wanted to become an inventor but were too afraid to take the leap, or if you think you'd be a product development genius but don't work for Ideo, head to Quirky. It only costs $99 to submit an idea. Giving prod dev and naming feedback is free. (Thank you, Rob Walker.)

Maybe I'm just iltwitterate?

My last post has been bugging me all week? Why don't I "get it" with regard to Twitter?

How I use the technology constitutes part of the problem. I only used my cell phone to post and track others, and now that seems woefully inadequate if you want to really get the most of Twitter. The typing interface along slows the whole process down, especially since you need to use other people's handles, TinyURLs and tags to mine the tweetstream.

When I started using the service a couple of years ago it was mostly a way to trade small remarks and jokes between a group of friends. I also loved how I could create my own stream and to track the various goings on of people who didn't even know each other. The communication could get so personal and subtle. A lot of fun. Seems very parochial viewed what folks are doing now.

What's really funny to me is that I argued about its value from the beginning and have defended it several times around the dinner table as extended family expressed uncomphrension, disgust and even fear about "this Twitter thing." And now I'm the one who can't seem to change my lens. Twitter must be a great way to find out more about your interests and "meet" people who hold the same, but at this point, getting more information is hardly what I need--I can barely deal with the infostream I've got.

Anyway, plenty of companies are using it to market, sell and develop brands. I'm sure at some point the light bulb will go off for me, too.

"Enough about me. Let's talk about nothing." Why Twitter is bumming me out.

 

(image taken from www.csp.org.uk)

I removed the "Follow My Twitter Updates" widget from the right column of this blog. For starters, I haven't posted anything to Twitter in almost a year. (I just can't bring myself to say "tweets" BTW--it sounds so, well, stupid). And the more I see of what actually gets communicated, the more I think it's a waste of time from a macro perspective.

For example, I was pretty damn shocked when I read the aggregate feed of a very disco-looking, well-staffed "social enterprise" consultancy; not only did they seem overly self-obsessed with their constanting posting on a Saturday, but I found only ONE relatively useful piece of information hiding in a whole page of blahblahblah. One. And this from a group of ubersmart people who will guide large enterprises into a new phase of doing business...or at least they'll try to help large enterprises figure out what to do now that the top's been ripped off of our collective Pandora's Box.

This blog provides a place for me to collect and communicate stuff I'd roughly categorize as professional, and so you really don't need to know if the dry cleaner broke a button on my favorite dress shirt, or if I want to say "thanks" to @GlibHandle for something about which you know nothing. Unless, of course, if that broken butten or somethingaboutwhichyouknow nothing pulled the lever in the Pachinko Machine that is my brain and something useful tumbled out.

Pfffft, pffffft, is this thing on?

I'll save you an explanation of my blogging silence. Those who know me have come to expect it.

Anyway, I found a spare moment a few days ago and stumbled over to Russell Davies. What a gem. The man just plain buries you in fascinating things. Who knew about:

An interesting woman who lives in London named Meg Pickard?

The photographer Jon Cherry?

Matt Webb's presentation at a conference called Reboot, during which he talks about the value of doing something for 100 hours?

Summary of which from Mr. Webb as quoted by Mr Davies:

Because when you contribute, when you participate in culture, when you're no longer solving problems, but inventing culture itself, that is when life starts getting interesting.

And since I actually try to follow the Getting Things Done system, I naturally love the idea of inbox zero.

Bubbles

Good fun is always to be had when we turn on the bubble machine and just watch those bubbles blow. I caught my two little ones as they were watching the bubbles and trying to pop them.