The Emerging Times

'Finding Chaos In Order' (excerpt)

'Finding Chaos In Order' (excerpt)

Finding Chaos in Order is about exercising (your mind) or changing the way you and your organization currently thinks or behaves.

It's getting you to reconsider the what is of the business. They are the rules. The past history. The 'way we've been doing it' kind of mind set.

But the what if angle if far more interesting. Occasionally, this kind of thinking allows a person to engineer or experiment with other ways of thinking. It's open to new influences. And therefore—new approaches.

In 1999, during the height of the internet 'boom', while there were thousands of Blockbuster Video stores all across America, Netflix found 'Chaos in Order'. They said 'what if'.

The best ideas, products and businesses are far less 'hard wired' to their past business models—because that's what the marketplace is asking for today.

So now it's 2011, it's the early height of the 'mobile boom', what if...

{you created a little chaos?}

ERA OF TRANSFORMATION

We are in the era of great transformation. Practically 5 seconds ago...Myspace was replaced by Facebook, iTunes overtook the record industry, the sit-down internet was replaced by the on-the-go internet, a 'bagillion' apps were downloaded, and 15-million iPads were purchased. (We can go on for hours here.)

In a split second things can (and will) change. Each time faster than the one before. Innovation, ideas technology are requiring our companies and brands to adapt, or die. There's just one very big problem here: change doesn't come easy. It's not exactly easy to change your staff. And certainly it's even harder to move the entire 'Mothership'.

So. How might you be able to cause such a dynamic transformation for the better? That shift in your organization that allows you to compete? How are you going to develop a fresh approach to motivating your team? How will you actually be able to change your client and suceed the next era?

If we're going to 'boom' in the next era we have to change with it.

Maybe if we started by changing ourselves, our own individual thinking, might we be able to implement a new approach and surpass survival. And who knows, perhaps just after we succeed with changing ourselves, might we be able to start to cause a greater transformation in all those other areas on-board.

We are in the era of great transformation. Don't blink or forget about it even for a second. Whoops...you missed it. It just happened 5-seconds ago. Oh look, here it comes again...Ready? 1.2.3.

Images. Ideas. Words.

Images. Ideas. Words.

That's what we're all dealing with here. As advertisers we concoct and apply these three powerful things to create the stuff people see and eventually buy. It's the product, the personality, the ad campaign, the music video.

If your ever lost in the business, wondering what exactly it is that you do or make, simply remember these three things. Consider them your ingredients. They're what the world sees and (hopefully) remembers. If your missing one of them, well then you're probably not doing it right. And if your thinking that an app or technology will do the trick, well you're wrong again.

The unique and consistent impact of images, ideas and words are what makes us remember messages. So when your building your next campaign, remember your simple tool set here. They're your simple building blocks to making advertising.

Images, ideas, and words.