An advertising planner takes a road trip to find out if the American Dream is dead or alive
Planner Heidi Hackemer and her pickup truck. Soon to be far from New York City.
I suppose one could argue that given the current economy, the diminished value of most homes, miserably low interest rates and an unreliable stock market, the American Dream is on life support at best.
Add to that the high price of college education, the lack of jobs awaiting recent graduates, and the nagging sense that health care will probably eat up all of our retirement savings forcing those same grads to nix any expectation that an inheritance might help them dig out of their debt, and the old version of the dream — home ownership, two cars in the garage, a better economic situation than the previous generation, lives on only in TV shows and movies from the 1950s. And, perhaps, in Silicon Valley.
Then again, that could be too pessimistic a perspective. After all, hope dies last.
Maybe there’s no longer a collective American Dream. But perhaps there are thousands of individual ones to replace it. Maybe they’re simpler. Less materialistic. Perhaps they’re about downsizing, having more control, working for oneself, consuming less, giving more. It would certainly be useful to know.
A planner goes on the road
Which is why I am so excited for (and jealous of ) my friend Heidi Hackemer, planner extraordinaire (until today at Droga5 and previously at BBH NY) who is about to embark on a mostly solo cross country trip in her pick-up truck to find out. She plans on meeting and interviewing folks she’d never run into in a Manhattan restaurant or art gallery in quest of an answer.
She has a route — west from Florida to California then north to Alaska; a plan — she’ll stop in diners at lunch, sit at the counter and open a road atlas, “works every time” she informs me; and a slew of social media connections willing to help from afar with tips and suggestions for where to go and who to seek out.
After that it’s just Heidi, a digital video camera, her iPhone, her charm and her curiosity.
As Heidi says, “I hope to understand this country in ways that living in my NYC bubble makes difficult.”
We should probably all do a little bit of what Heidi’s doing: get out of our bubble; seek reactions from people different from us; observe someone else’s world from her perspective.
Heeding advice from Jerry Della Femina
It was probably 20 plus years ago when Jerry Della Femina, quoted in a WSJ legends ad, warned us about becoming isolated.
“Young creative people start out hungry. They’re off the street; they know how to think, And their work is great. Then they get successful. They make more money, spend time in restaurants they never dreamed of, fly back and forth between New York and Los Angeles. Pretty soon, the real world isn’t people. It’s just a bunch of lights off the right side of the plane. You have to stay in touch if you’re going to write advertising that works.”
He concludes with this suggestion:
“Ride a subway. Stand up on a bus. Buy a hot dog on the corner. Stay in touch.”
Twitter and Facebook and Instagram may all work pretty well, but Heidi’s approach, following in the footsteps of Alexis De Toqueville or Studs Terkel, past chroniclers who made similar journeys, seems a far better way to heed Jerry’s advice.
I’ll be following Heidi’s journey closely. Sadly, it will be via her blog and Twitter feed, rather than from the road. Perhaps you should do the same.
And now, an added bonus for reading this far:
Excerpt from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, written in 1840
In America I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the happiest condition that exists in the world; it seemed to me that a sort of cloud habitually covered their features; they appeared to me grave and almost sad even in their pleasures.
The principal reason for this is that the first do not think of the evils they endure, whereas the others dream constantly of the goods they do not have.
It is a strange thing to see with what sort of feverish ardor Americans pursue well-being and how they show themselves constantly tormented by a vague fear of not having chosen the shortest route that can lead to it.
The inhabitant of the United States attaches himself to the goods of this world as if he were assured of not dying, and he rushes so precipitately to grasp those that pass within his reach that one would say he fears at each instant he will cease to live before he has enjoyed them. He grasps them all but without clutching them, and he soon allows them to escape from his hands so as to run after new enjoyments.
Why SxSW is awesome from the moment you arrive
It’s not the weather, that’s for sure. It’s 40 degrees and pouring out today. There’s a line for umbrellas and people are paying exorbitant prices for rain jackets in hotel gift shops. Oh well.
I’ve been here a day and half so far, and have only started to make my schedule, but have already had incredible encounters with people I know and others I met for the first time.
It even started on the plane. I don’t think there was a single person on Jet Blue Flight 1263 who wasn’t headed to the nerd convention. In fact most of us knew each other.
I ran into Scotty Henderson and got an update on New Empire Builders, a collaborative venture to discover the start-ups, non-profits and companies making the world better.
I sat next to a young entrepreneur Scott Dubois, co-founder of Pidalia, a software company disguised as an ad agency because if you make stuff for marketers rather than for IT departments it plays a bigger role in a company’s strategy. Interesting to see all the ways that tech is infiltrating marketing and advertising.
In Austin I caught up with Musa Tariq, the global head of Burberry’s social media initiatives. We talked for a couple of hours about the need for better social metrics and an understanding of how to leverage likes and engagement in more effective ways. Burberry uses the new platforms as well as anyone and has mounds of data as you would expect. Further validation that the interest graph platforms are the future.
Over drinks I had the pleasure of meeting Edelman’s Managing Director of Europe, Middle East and Asia Marshall Manson. I got a crash course in how social media does and doesn’t work in different countries around the world.
And finally, this morning Conrad Lisco of Co:Collective invited me to join him for breakfast and a rapid fire discussion of new business models, the future of work, and the role technology will play.
I haven’t even been to a panel and I’m smarter than when I got here. I know more about how to counsel brands and clients on mobile development. I have a more vivid understanding of where analytics has to focus if it’s to help social marketers make better decisions. I have further validation and also a better perspective as to how the interest graph can help brands segment their communities and emerge as trusted experts. And I have a new insights as to how social media differs from one country to the next.
And to think I only came for the parties.
The paper clip: a creative exercise
Ingredients
One paper clip, 25 minutes, your imagination.
Assignment
Generate at least 25 great creative ideas to promote the utility and versatility of the paper clip. (After all, it is an under appreciated occupant of supply closets everywhere.)
Process
Work in teams of five, but for the first five minutes no talking allowed. Each team member writes non-stop any ideas that come into his head. After five minutes teams work together, sharing ideas, building off of each other’s kernels, augmenting the initial body of work, making them better, and finally agreeing on five or 10 really good ones.
Criteria for deciding
- Do you like it, really like it?
- Is the idea guaranteed to get attention?
- Is it something you’d remember?
- If it’s not pure, raw entertainment does it offer genuine utility?
- Would you tell a friend about it?
Hints and stimulae
What if the paper clip were huge?
What if Marcel the Shell used it?
What if it were a metaphor?
What if the world were attacked by Origami?
What if Banksy created graffiti with it?
What if it were a Guinness record?
What if it starred in the SI bathing suit issue?
What if it came in a little blue box?
What if it were a political statement?
What if it had an arch rival?
What if Lady Gaga’s incorporated it into her shoe collection?
What if it were an amusement park ride?
I tried this exercise yesterday as a way to inspire students in my Strategic Creative Development class to think more creatively. It worked pretty well. It got people to break out of traditional routines, come up with crazier ideas than usual (we had everything from epic battles between paper clips and staples, a means to world peace, even famous one page documents – think Declaration of Independence — that upon close inspection had a slight indentation in the shape of a paper clip in their upper left hand corners, suggesting that maybe there should have been a second or third page that we’ll never know about.)
Anyway, thought I’d share it, If your class or company or marketing department needs a little brain lubrication, this exercise works pretty well.
Got any others you can share? I need more.
I need an Internet car
Fact: Twenty percent of the price of a new car is for the software.
My car didn't stop itself from hitting this tree, either.
Monday I take my seven-year-old car in to have the front end repaired. I hit a cement block in a local garage because my car didn’t let me know that it was there. It tore off the bumper and part of the grill. As you can see from the image on the left, hitting things head on is a recurring problem.
If I had an Internet ready car, it would have warned me. It would also have checked me in on Foursquare so that people would know where I was. It might have taken an Instagram image of the dangerous cement block so that others would be aware of it.
Looks like we can’t escape. The reason I’m still driving a seven-year old car is that it’s an Audi S4 Avant six speed. You can’t buy them in America anymore. You can’t even get an A4 wagon without settling for an automatic. If you like driving, you don’t have many options these days.
But if you don’t like driving, life on the road will soon be grand. Your car will know traffic conditions before you go anywhere. Since it will have access to your calendar, it will let you know if you need to leave earlier than planned to make that meeting or if you can continue tweeting from the office instead of from the road. You’ll be able to tweet from the road because your dashboard will be an over-sized digital touch screen from which you can update your status, check your Gmail, and access your friends’ playlists on Spotify.
For me the best part will be the satellite connection that informs every McDonald’s I drive by that I’m in the vicinity, so it can send me real-time offers based on how many people are in my car. The heat sensors in the seats will let the cloud know if there are passengers occupying the back seat or just luggage. And if they include digital scales as part of the system McDonald’s will even know if the car’s occupants are candidates for a Super Size meal or just a burger and fries.
Better yet, if the car can drive itself – inevitable within 10 years, I’m told – I can simply push the steering wheel out of the way and fire up the grill and deep fryer and make my own lunch. Then I can even share what I’m eating for lunch on Twitter. From my car. While I’m not driving.
Have you ordered your Internet ready car?
Recommended song for this post: Baby you can drive my car.
Lasting companies know how to re-invent themselves
Mike Markkula, right, Apple's first investor and father figure to Jobs. Fired by Jobs in 1997 his parting advice called for re-invention.
Like everyone else in America who still reads I am deeply engrossed in Walter Isaacson’s biography on Steve Jobs.
It’s a remarkably honest and thorough account. It introduces us to Steve’s early influences. It explains the genesis of his design obsession. It reveals his many flaws.
While the entire book chronicles the story of Steve’s life from childhood to the end, every chapter is a story in its own right. You probably have your favorite. The lost battle with John Sculley. The launch of Macintosh. The board trying to kill the best ever Super Bowl spot. (They failed because Chiat Day secretly refused to sell off the media.) Jobs’ questionably hesitant but triumphant return. The complex rivalry between Jobs and his sometimes nemesis, sometimes friend, one time savior Bill Gates. Or on another front, the confrontations with Michael Eisner that prompted Disney to back off its ill-advised attempt to re-write Toy Story.
Readers can cull endless lessons from these stories: how to simplify, how to believe in an idea, how to adhere to standards, how to trust your intuition, how not to back down. In some cases – personal hygiene, treatment of friends and family – we can also learn what not to do.
But one of my favorite lessons doesn’t come from Steve. It’s attributed to Mike Markkula. Upon his official return to Apple in 1997, Jobs fired Markkula from the board and then asked Mike to join him on one of his long walks. Jobs told the former chairman that his goal was to build a company that would endure. He asked Markkula’s advice. Markkula shared this.
“Lasting companies know how to re-invent themselves. Hewlett-Packard had done that repeatedly; it started as an instrument company, then a computer company. Apple has been sideline by Microsoft in the PC business. (by then Apple’s market share had plummeted from 16 percent to four percent). You’ve got to reinvent the company to do some other thing, like consumer products or devices. You’ve got to be like a butterfly and have a metamorphosis.”*
The language and the metaphor may not sound brilliant. But you sure can’t argue with the advice. According to Isaacson, Jobs didn’t say much that day in 1997, but clearly he agreed.
Lasting companies know how to re-invent themselves. I think the same might even be said for individuals.
Got a favorite story from the book of Jobs? Please share. And as always, thanks for stopping by.
Photo “borrowed” from Christopher Dernbach’s blog Mac History.
*Excerpt from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs, page 320.
