take 2
posted by Ben Mack at
4:20 AM
0 Comments
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Saturday, June 12, 2010
getting ahead
due to contemporary decencystandards, the rest of this
image has been omitted
posted by Ben Mack at
12:28 PM
0 Comments
Sunday, June 06, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
$harpen your $aw...
7 Habits of Highly Profitable eCommerce Storeowners
Habits are those things we do and we don’t even know we are doing. I interviewed several highly profitable eCommerce storeowners about their business day and their approaches to learning. Being an entrepreneur is a path of life-long learning.
Entrepreneurial success means you write your own Freedom Formula. Most people feel rich when they have consistent cash-flow greater than their means, they are happy and they have as much time for themselves as they want.
Getting profitable is where most would-be eCommerce store owners fail. These 7 Habits of Highly Profitable eCommerce Store-Owners increase your likelihood of achieving your financial independence in this lifetime.
Habits 1, 2 & 3 require mastery before daydreaming about firing your boss, please. These first habits increase your efficiencies.
* Habit 1: Pick 1 mentor per discipline.
Can we all agree that Dan Theis and Leslie Rhodie are genius SEO gurus? Yet, there are times when they disagree. How can that be? Well, they have slightly different models of effectiveness. When you are getting started, you will achieve the results you want fastest by picking 1 mentor per discipline you are seeking to master. Pick 1 mentor per discipline. There are a dozen ways to skin a cat, however, if you use more than 1-way at a time, you are bound to get blood all over the place.
* Habit 2: Separate planning from implementing.
Highly effective implementers separate planning from implementing. Why? Because they’ve learned that when they plan their work, and then work that plan… they get a lot more done than if they 2nd-guess themselves all the time. Plan your work and then work that plan. Planning is often more fun than implementing. Eventually, you can outsource the implementing. In the mean time, plan for outsourcing.
The output of planning is a process map. Following this process map is implementation. As you are getting started, you will be implementing a mentor’s process map. Eventually you will customize a process map so that others can be hired to implement your plans with minimal supervision and minimal interaction.
* Habit 3: S.M.A.R.T. Goals
Practice reverse engineering your success. You look at what you want to get done, then chunk-down those big goals into immediately accomplishable actions. Specify weekly, daily and even hourly goals.
S.M.A.R.T. Goals = Specific Measurable Action that’s Realistic and Time-bound.
Please notice the term “Specific Measurable Action.” Measurable is what makes S.M.A.R.T. Goals cut-and-dry as to whether or not you got your goal done. If you are not sure if a goal is S.M.A.R.T. or not, ask yourself this question: “How will I know that my goal is done?” If there is a cut-and-dry way to measure when the task is completed, you have a S.M.A.R.T. goal. When you get in the habit of using S.M.A.R.T. goals, you will see yourself get exponentially more profitable.
Habits 4, 5 & 6 prepare you to fire your boss. Getting from profitable to sustainably profitable so you can securely firing your boss usually requires scaling, you need to level-up. Often, the skills that got you to be profitable are not the same skills that are required to thrive.
* Habit 4: Think R.O.I.
The greatest Return-On-Investment is free time. Select for repeatable solutions. Return-On-Investment requires you to allocate a value to every effort. If you paid yourself for selecting and managing a solution… how would that effect your R.O.I.?
Free, Fast, Effective: pick two. Quit looking for free.
Nothing is “free.” Free only works when you don’t pay yourself for the time.
Similarly, just because something is the cheapest doesn’t mean it is the least expensive. Hiring on the cheap often means you spend more time training, managing and finding replacements.
* Habit 5: Inventory your effort
Tracking how you invest your time is key to effectiveness. Gauging the R.O.I. on your time will allow you to see what you might want to stop doing. Time management is as much about doing more of what works as it is about doing less of what isn’t profitable.
* Habit 6: Automate
Automation may include outsourcing, but simply hiring a vendor doesn’t automate your process. Automation is hands-free. Outsourcing requires time training, managing and finding replacements. Most eCommerce store owners seek to fully automate as much of their business as possible. However, automation is often more of a goal than a reality. The goal is making more money with less of your effort.
HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN TO QUIT YOUR JOB? Jay Conrad Levinson suggests that when your part-time net income exceeds your salary for six-months straight, your probably ready.
The 7th Habit is the scientist’s way of life…
* Habit 7: Always be testing.
There’s only 1-thing I really care about testing… profits. To begin with, you need to ask for the sale in multiple ways and see what makes a sale. Tracking is an easy way to begin testing, it is testing how many visitors came from a specific source. If you are testing against sales, you aren’t branding. If you are always testing and you are testing against sales… guess what? You are always closing.
Always be closing… Up-sells, cross-sells and newsletters are just the beginning. Remember that anyone who markets more aggressively than you often appears as an a**hole, and everybody not selling as hard as you probably appears as an idiot. The same goes for you in the eyes of other marketers. If you are serious about quitting your job, you might find yourself needing to market harder than you were first comfortable with. Many people will choose an avatar, a pseudonym adopted by a marketer. Benjamin Franklin had 42 avatars by the age of 23… each pen name wrote about the benefits of giving an almanac as a present for the holidays. That’s how Benjamin Franklin popularized Poor Richard’s Almanac, article submissions under scores of pen names. “Poor Richard” was an avatar Benjamin Franklin created for himself. Then, he created social proof through scores of avatars promoting Poor Richard’s Almanac. I’m not endorsing FLOGGING. I’m just sayin’ that at least one of the forefathers of these United States made his fortune as a flogger. I’ve heard Benjamin Franklin called a lot of names, but idiot wasn’t among them.
And so concludes my listing of The 7 Habits of Highly Profitable eCommerce Storeowners. Before I sign-off I want to ask you a couple questions…
1) How come habits are usually discussed in really negative terms?
2) You never see a got-rich-slow story on the news, do ya?
No. Always the rags-to-billionaire story. But the news is supposed to be objective. It's not. At minimum it's sensationalistic. I mean, aren't there more people who went from okay to millionaire than there are jet-owners, or cheats of some kind? Then why is every "newsworthy" success story about lottery winners, overnight-millionaires, billionaires or a negative story? I've had some friends really do some really cool stuff, but few of their accomplishments get seen on TV.
The "Whiz kid" news story seems like the same story every time: "Young man graduates from Ivy League School and their Alumni are proud to announce he just sold his company for $230,000,000! Meet his proud parents..."
When I was a kid, all the local Eagle Scouts were on the local news. Now, local news has such a global feel that the mom and pop accomplishments often get glossed-over.
But wouldn't you like to see your local Mom & Pop story? Would that be newsworthy?
Imagine seeing this on the news: "Today a young woman in Harleysville, Pennsylvania realized that her 2009 profits from her eStore had exceeded her salary and she gave notice to her boss. She realized she was freer than she had ever felt before. For the first time in her life she could spend her time, with whoever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and nobody could tell her what to do because she was her own boss and she was happy. Here's Tom with the weather..."
If you would like to share profitable eCommerce habits with your family, learn more about writing your own Freedom Formula with your family… search eStoreOpoly on FaceBook.
So, do you...
THINK TWO promotions AHEAD?
posted by Ben Mack at
9:24 AM
0 Comments
Monday, March 22, 2010
World Water Day...
Thank you to Dogfish Head for alerting it's followers to World Water Day!If I were on TED i imagine I'd speak about Clean Drinkable Water,
World Water Day & Day For Interconnectedness on 10/10/10.
It could happen.
"One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you're going to wind up with an ear full of cider." ~Sky Masterson, Guys and Dolls
posted by Ben Mack at
3:12 PM
0 Comments
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
How to Bet on Research
prequel here
Howard W. Campbell, III here, I want to start with the three most important takeaways of this article:
1. A confused mind won’t buy.
2. Customer offers must be easy to understand.
3. Repetition works.
Let’s begin…
Sales Offer = Customer Proposition.
Business is a proposal made to a customer that is accepted and delivered. Sustainable businesses make irresistible offers that are accepted again and again and again, at a premium price, to customers who become irrationally loyal.
The best way to learn how to make an irresistible offer that is accepted again and again and again (at a premium price) to customers who are irrationally loyal is to model and swipe the successful sales systems you see around you. (PLEASE NOTE: Plagiarizing is NOT swiping, it’s stealing. That aside, swiping is key to entrepreneurial success in Direct Response marketing.)
In poker, there are only two ways to make more money: make more money with every pot you win, and put less money in the hands you don’t win. Simply put… Make more money when you make money, and invest less in losing propositions.
Avoiding Losing Propositions
Making an unclear customer proposition is like wearing sales repellant. Confusion leads to inaction, which kills sales. If there is one lesson I want to you take from this article, it is that a confused mind won’t buy. (I should know! One place I have great room for growth is making my ideas simple. )
In 1996 we asked 200 Baskin Robbins customers how interested they would be in buying a $1.99 Ice Cream Sundae with Warm Cookies, which included two-scoops of ice cream of your choice with two freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, whipped-cream, hot fudge or caramel, peanuts and a cherry on top. Slightly more than average said they wanted to buy our $1.99 warm cookie ice cream sundae. However, after tasting this product, over 90% said they wanted to buy another $1.99 Ice Cream Sundae with Warm Cookies. The taste-testing research house said that our test product had the highest taste satisfaction rating they had ever seen in their 23 year history of taste-testing products.
I thought, “Ice Cream plus Warm Cookies, what’s not to love?” I championed the new product. I proposed a sampling campaign, figuring that if we got folks to try one, they’d want to buy more.
RESULTS => Twenty Baskin Robbins’ franchise owners invested $12,500 in the equipment to bake cookies in their stores. After our 30-day market test, the new product was deemed a flop.
LESSON=> Beware of confusion. There was something confusing about our product description.
We never overcame the intial communication challenge that out of those who had never actually tasted the warm cookie sundae - only slightly more than average said they wanted to buy one! I figured that the smell of cookies baking would fix that.
What happened was… The test flopped harder than any product test in about seven years. Bummer. Ben looked baaaad. I lost trust from my client and a score of franchisees lost money following my bad advice.
My biggest lesson learned… Nobody ever lost money underestimating the laziness of the American mind. If we can’t immediately grasp the proposition, we won’t buy. If there is one lesson I want to you take from this article, it is that a confused mind won’t buy.
If there is a second lesson I want to you take from this article, it is that surveying your customers is never as accurate as testing what they actually do in a buying environment.
Part II => For advanced marketers only!
(If you get confused by what I'm about to say, please stop reading immediately and simply remember… If there is one lesson I want to you take from this article, it is that a confused mind won’t buy. If Part #2 confuses you, stop reading and just remember the previous point: A Confused Mind Never Buys.)
If there is a second lesson I want to you take away from this article, it is that surveying your customers is never as accurate as testing what they actually do in a buying environment. In order to make this business lesson more clear I want you to see yourself as owning a casino with scores of Automated Profit Machines scattered around your casino.
I’ve been a project manager on consumer research for casinos. First they use qualitative research to generate and refine ideas. Second, they use quantitative surveys to identify what appear to be winning concepts. Third, they market-test a new game in a couple of their casinos. Finally, when they have a new winning customer proposition, a game customers want to play, they roll it out across all their casinos. It’s as simple as this… Testing leads to sustainable profits.
Test before you bet big.
Paying for Media, like PPC or a CPA offer, is just like making a wager; we’re betting that we’ll get back more than we put in. Scientific marketers and profitable gamblers are in the business of mathematics, we make our livings identifying and investing in profitable propositions. From a business model perspective, the biggest difference between marketers and gamblers is scalability. On the one hand, gamblers need to scramble from one game to another, investing their personal time in every transaction. On the other hand, scientific marketers enjoy the leisure that comes from automating repeatable profitable propositions.
Established marketers are more like casino owners, than players. Casinos have enough traffic coming to them, that whether they win or lose on any given transaction is largely irrelevant. The casino owner’s profits go up as their traffic increases. From the owner’s perspective their casino is an automated profit machine.
In order to construct your casino, you need to first be a player, identifying your repeatable profitable propositions, extending your winning streaks, and automating the traffic generation to your store. Extending your winning streak entails thinking two sales ahead, optimizing your sales process and thereby increasing the average lifetime value of your customers.
When you know the LTV, your customer average LifeTime Value, you can appraise what traffic you can purchase profitably, automating your traffic generation.
Scientific marketing is about mining your data and minding your store. Whenever possible, wager on split-testing, not survey results. Yes, surveys will help you uncover what’s worth split-testing. A single mistake of mine in misinterpreting survey results cost 20 small business owners $12,500 each, a tidy $250,000. Fortunately, split-testing saved another 3,000+ entrepreneurs from making the same costly mistake.
In 1996 I worked for Donny Deutsch at Deutsch L.A., the ad agency that won ad agency of the year that year, and the next year. I was the #2 account planner on Baskin Robbins, under Jeffrey Blish, the marketing genius strategist often credited for the meteoric growth of the fledgling Los Angeles advertising agency.
How did I misinterpret survey results costing 20 Baskin Robbins’ franchisee owners $250,000? I put too much weight on taste satisfaction while I discounted the value and importance of confusion. We went into test-marketing before we had a winning proposition. We failed at crafting an irresistible offer.
In a short article like this, I can’t teach you everything you need to know about consumer research. On top of that, I’m only an expert on surveying, not testing. However, to avoid costly mistakes, you should know the five primary errors in consumer reported data, what puts “FILMS” (described below) over your lens of consumer research.
There are five primary errors in consumer reported data. Business decisions based on faulty consumer reported data are financially and emotionally costly. Poor research costs you money in lost revenue, wasted resources and halted momentum. Losing profitable momentum can breed distrust among business partners.
FILMS The 5 Errors in Consumer Reported Data
1. Fatigue
• Inaccurate responses can come from participants growing tired.
2. Inability to gauge
• Most people can tell how much milk they drank yesterday, however, asking them to gauge how much milk they drank last year will likely generate inaccurate results.
3. Lens of self-perception
• Everybody’s perception of themselves is somehow skewed. These are honest mistakes, and reflect a participants self-perception as opposed to an objective reality.
4. Misunderstand what’s being asked
• Confusion from the question or the category of the question will lead to inaccurate responses.
5. Social desirability
• When it feels better to lie, then to tell the truth, is the conscious face of being motivated by social desirability. The far subtler side is seeking to be liked and thereby intentionally giving answers expected to be pleasing to the interviewer.
There are at least two types of data collection in consumer research: Surveying & Testing. Surveying is the land of make-believe, asking prospects and customers to imagine what they might do. Testing is split-testing, where participants don’t realize their behavior is being aggregated and analyzed. StomperNet employs the brightest minds in Testing. Andy Edmonds, Dan Thies and David Bullock are some the world’s most profitable split-testers.
While my data analysis cost 20 small business owners $250,000, fortunately market-testing saved another 3,000+ entrepreneurs from making the same costly mistake. That’s the power of test-marketing, limiting liability. Split-testing sales processes often reveals one process is more profitable than another. Split-testing creates profitable results you can bank on with confidence. It’s as simple as that… Split-testing creates profitable results you can bank on with confidence.
Before we conclude, I want to review the three most important takeaways of this article:
1) A confused mind won’t buy,
2) Customer offers must be easy to understand, and
3) Repetition works.
Let’s show you how to make money with surveys…
I want you to see yourself as owning a casino. I want to show you how consumer research is used before split-testing, while the sales page is being written, research to help "casino owners" like you make more money.
Come learn from a Master… Audrey Kerwood http://eComIncubator.com
Howard W. Campbell, III here, I want to start with the three most important takeaways of this article:
1. A confused mind won’t buy.
2. Customer offers must be easy to understand.
3. Repetition works.
Let’s begin…
Sales Offer = Customer Proposition.
Business is a proposal made to a customer that is accepted and delivered. Sustainable businesses make irresistible offers that are accepted again and again and again, at a premium price, to customers who become irrationally loyal.
The best way to learn how to make an irresistible offer that is accepted again and again and again (at a premium price) to customers who are irrationally loyal is to model and swipe the successful sales systems you see around you. (PLEASE NOTE: Plagiarizing is NOT swiping, it’s stealing. That aside, swiping is key to entrepreneurial success in Direct Response marketing.)
In poker, there are only two ways to make more money: make more money with every pot you win, and put less money in the hands you don’t win. Simply put… Make more money when you make money, and invest less in losing propositions.
Avoiding Losing Propositions
Making an unclear customer proposition is like wearing sales repellant. Confusion leads to inaction, which kills sales. If there is one lesson I want to you take from this article, it is that a confused mind won’t buy. (I should know! One place I have great room for growth is making my ideas simple. )
In 1996 we asked 200 Baskin Robbins customers how interested they would be in buying a $1.99 Ice Cream Sundae with Warm Cookies, which included two-scoops of ice cream of your choice with two freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, whipped-cream, hot fudge or caramel, peanuts and a cherry on top. Slightly more than average said they wanted to buy our $1.99 warm cookie ice cream sundae. However, after tasting this product, over 90% said they wanted to buy another $1.99 Ice Cream Sundae with Warm Cookies. The taste-testing research house said that our test product had the highest taste satisfaction rating they had ever seen in their 23 year history of taste-testing products.
I thought, “Ice Cream plus Warm Cookies, what’s not to love?” I championed the new product. I proposed a sampling campaign, figuring that if we got folks to try one, they’d want to buy more.
RESULTS => Twenty Baskin Robbins’ franchise owners invested $12,500 in the equipment to bake cookies in their stores. After our 30-day market test, the new product was deemed a flop.
LESSON=> Beware of confusion. There was something confusing about our product description.
We never overcame the intial communication challenge that out of those who had never actually tasted the warm cookie sundae - only slightly more than average said they wanted to buy one! I figured that the smell of cookies baking would fix that.
What happened was… The test flopped harder than any product test in about seven years. Bummer. Ben looked baaaad. I lost trust from my client and a score of franchisees lost money following my bad advice.
My biggest lesson learned… Nobody ever lost money underestimating the laziness of the American mind. If we can’t immediately grasp the proposition, we won’t buy. If there is one lesson I want to you take from this article, it is that a confused mind won’t buy.
If there is a second lesson I want to you take from this article, it is that surveying your customers is never as accurate as testing what they actually do in a buying environment.
Part II => For advanced marketers only!
(If you get confused by what I'm about to say, please stop reading immediately and simply remember… If there is one lesson I want to you take from this article, it is that a confused mind won’t buy. If Part #2 confuses you, stop reading and just remember the previous point: A Confused Mind Never Buys.)
If there is a second lesson I want to you take away from this article, it is that surveying your customers is never as accurate as testing what they actually do in a buying environment. In order to make this business lesson more clear I want you to see yourself as owning a casino with scores of Automated Profit Machines scattered around your casino.
I’ve been a project manager on consumer research for casinos. First they use qualitative research to generate and refine ideas. Second, they use quantitative surveys to identify what appear to be winning concepts. Third, they market-test a new game in a couple of their casinos. Finally, when they have a new winning customer proposition, a game customers want to play, they roll it out across all their casinos. It’s as simple as this… Testing leads to sustainable profits.
Test before you bet big.
Paying for Media, like PPC or a CPA offer, is just like making a wager; we’re betting that we’ll get back more than we put in. Scientific marketers and profitable gamblers are in the business of mathematics, we make our livings identifying and investing in profitable propositions. From a business model perspective, the biggest difference between marketers and gamblers is scalability. On the one hand, gamblers need to scramble from one game to another, investing their personal time in every transaction. On the other hand, scientific marketers enjoy the leisure that comes from automating repeatable profitable propositions.
Established marketers are more like casino owners, than players. Casinos have enough traffic coming to them, that whether they win or lose on any given transaction is largely irrelevant. The casino owner’s profits go up as their traffic increases. From the owner’s perspective their casino is an automated profit machine.
In order to construct your casino, you need to first be a player, identifying your repeatable profitable propositions, extending your winning streaks, and automating the traffic generation to your store. Extending your winning streak entails thinking two sales ahead, optimizing your sales process and thereby increasing the average lifetime value of your customers.
When you know the LTV, your customer average LifeTime Value, you can appraise what traffic you can purchase profitably, automating your traffic generation.
Scientific marketing is about mining your data and minding your store. Whenever possible, wager on split-testing, not survey results. Yes, surveys will help you uncover what’s worth split-testing. A single mistake of mine in misinterpreting survey results cost 20 small business owners $12,500 each, a tidy $250,000. Fortunately, split-testing saved another 3,000+ entrepreneurs from making the same costly mistake.
In 1996 I worked for Donny Deutsch at Deutsch L.A., the ad agency that won ad agency of the year that year, and the next year. I was the #2 account planner on Baskin Robbins, under Jeffrey Blish, the marketing genius strategist often credited for the meteoric growth of the fledgling Los Angeles advertising agency.
How did I misinterpret survey results costing 20 Baskin Robbins’ franchisee owners $250,000? I put too much weight on taste satisfaction while I discounted the value and importance of confusion. We went into test-marketing before we had a winning proposition. We failed at crafting an irresistible offer.
In a short article like this, I can’t teach you everything you need to know about consumer research. On top of that, I’m only an expert on surveying, not testing. However, to avoid costly mistakes, you should know the five primary errors in consumer reported data, what puts “FILMS” (described below) over your lens of consumer research.
There are five primary errors in consumer reported data. Business decisions based on faulty consumer reported data are financially and emotionally costly. Poor research costs you money in lost revenue, wasted resources and halted momentum. Losing profitable momentum can breed distrust among business partners.
FILMS The 5 Errors in Consumer Reported Data
1. Fatigue
• Inaccurate responses can come from participants growing tired.
2. Inability to gauge
• Most people can tell how much milk they drank yesterday, however, asking them to gauge how much milk they drank last year will likely generate inaccurate results.
3. Lens of self-perception
• Everybody’s perception of themselves is somehow skewed. These are honest mistakes, and reflect a participants self-perception as opposed to an objective reality.
4. Misunderstand what’s being asked
• Confusion from the question or the category of the question will lead to inaccurate responses.
5. Social desirability
• When it feels better to lie, then to tell the truth, is the conscious face of being motivated by social desirability. The far subtler side is seeking to be liked and thereby intentionally giving answers expected to be pleasing to the interviewer.
There are at least two types of data collection in consumer research: Surveying & Testing. Surveying is the land of make-believe, asking prospects and customers to imagine what they might do. Testing is split-testing, where participants don’t realize their behavior is being aggregated and analyzed. StomperNet employs the brightest minds in Testing. Andy Edmonds, Dan Thies and David Bullock are some the world’s most profitable split-testers.
While my data analysis cost 20 small business owners $250,000, fortunately market-testing saved another 3,000+ entrepreneurs from making the same costly mistake. That’s the power of test-marketing, limiting liability. Split-testing sales processes often reveals one process is more profitable than another. Split-testing creates profitable results you can bank on with confidence. It’s as simple as that… Split-testing creates profitable results you can bank on with confidence.
Before we conclude, I want to review the three most important takeaways of this article:
1) A confused mind won’t buy,
2) Customer offers must be easy to understand, and
3) Repetition works.
Let’s show you how to make money with surveys…
I want you to see yourself as owning a casino. I want to show you how consumer research is used before split-testing, while the sales page is being written, research to help "casino owners" like you make more money.
Come learn from a Master… Audrey Kerwood http://eComIncubator.com
posted by Ben Mack at
9:14 AM
0 Comments
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Brand Subversion & Fierce Creatures
for Reshma Shah & Aaron Carnes.
Something exciting is about to happen.
My fiancé and I are about to make magic. We're running a play we call PROJECT eStoreOpoly.
Finally, some friends will be able to stop worrying me.
Like Fierce Creatures
, the ending to Poker Without Cards was refilmed because early test audiences didn't care for scenes in which one of Liz Boswell's characters keeps getting killed off. This blog provides a brief chronology of the film's history and some never-before-seen information on the film's original ending.
My mystical friends call it a quickening, my rockstar friends talk about going through the fame turnstile, a gateway through which one never fully returns. I'm getting married 10/10/10.
My name is Howard W. Campbell, III. I was born with a longer name. I was born pronoid, it means that contrary to all the available evidence, I actually see how people like you. Your perception of life is that it's one long benefit dinner in *your* honor with everybody cheering *you* on and wanting *you* to win everything. I agree. You're simply temporarily miss-sorted. As you get each bit sorted-out, more and more falls inline, and everything gets easier. I'm an elephant too. I'm an artist. I'm a poet with a business plan. And, if I can keep my ego in check, I can come through this perturbation swimmingly, with a renewed ease of imperturbability.
Congratulations to Chris Zubryd who made it work... made a 1,000,000 viewed YouTube Video, now legendary of Howard W. Campbell interviewing Joel Bauer when he's staring at my boss' business card from CCEO and saying to him, "Your business card is crap!"
I recently gave-up my forray into professional media manipulation. I launched Super Ball Marketing. Here was the plan... I do parody ads, distribute them to local Tshirt shops and then pitch the big brands on being able to make their brand subversion problem go away, because I'd simply stop making the Tshirts. I had two problems. First, the big brands didn't care. Second, when I stopped making the shirts that teens liked, they became even more popular and Tshirt profiteers would keep making them. Turns out the gap in supply is what is required to really make a shirt in demand. There was that, plus, the one client who found out I rigged the whole thing didn't get pissed, they got excited and they wanted me to pull that off on their competitors. No good could come from that kind of escalating corporate crime. Most of my longtime readers are familiar with my handiwork in engineering kids to more effectively nag their parents. The PowerPoint i worked on at Lieber Research Worldwide. Well, I proudfully thought I had a more effective way to nag CEOs via Tshirts. I was wrong. My bad. Super Ball Marketing is no more.
Audrey & I started Like A Pro.
For those who were touched adversely by Super Ball Marketing. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Anybody who wasn't heard that before hasn't spent much time with Joe Vitale.
Allow me to begin today's lesson on branding. Branding is a deliberate act of increasing the value of an “owned entity” that is sold for a profit, and brand subversion is the deliberate perversion of a brand to mean something other than its original creator intended, regardless of the impact on the brand’s value.
Don't worry about that compadre, I'll be back. I should warn the intellectualy squeamish that now is the time to close this window and go about your merry way. There are live meme viruses in these hear fnords. That means their are fnords among us. This blog is outsider art, a discussion of the manipulation of meaning in commercial settings. Warning, ingesting these ideas is dangerous to your hegemonic stature. This guitar kills fascists.
While similar subversive tactics and methods may be found in political discourse, and while commercial brand subversion is often created through political motivations, this blog is not political, it's magickal. Fink, it's a jewish name, it means Poker Without Cards isn't a restricted club, it's an open source meme _ool. Notice there's no p in my ool. My detractors say I'm acting as if my poop don't stink. I ask how they know what somebody who's poop don't stink acts like. Everybody I know, when I ask them, we all agree our poop often stinks, except the raw food eaters. Crap, I do know people who say their poop don't stink. Some of them even brag about it. That doesn't bother me though. I certainly don't recall bragging about my poop to them. I send The Faster Webmaster my masterpieces occassionally, but that's because he once asked.
The intention of this blog is to include the widest variety of examples while excluding political subversive messaging, the term “owned entity” has been selected to include unnamed commercial products and exclude profitable ideas without a discrete owner. While owned entities almost always have names, exceptions can be seen in the artist formerly known as Prince and The Beatles’ White Album. An “owned entity” is not limited to a specific SKU, like The White Album on CD digitally re-mastered 2005, or theTravel-Sized Dove Bar. An “owned entity” may include a line of products, like all forms of The Beatles’ White Album or all Dove products. An “owned entity” may include a company like xxx, the owner of Dove products or a band like The Beatles.
Reshma, who is that? Quick question... may I speak to one of your classes about ARGs, Alternate Reality Games for fun and profits? I think it will be a real crowd pleaser.
For the purposes of this blog, I'm excluding governments and political initiatives from my discussion of branding and human engineering—while popularizing voting can be seen as productizing the election process in an age of consumerism, it can also be seen from a myriad of other perspectives and it is often difficult to parse who really benefits from the marketing of political ideas.
In order to broaden the discussion of media studies, we need some common ground of intellectual territory, a taxonomy must be born and codified. May I present to you Liz Boswell's Taxonony of Brand Subversion, circa 2005. These rubrics are based on then recent observations and will likely need to be reshaped and reformed to the ends of those who can repurpose them, be my guest.
You don't even need to cite us ;-)
[PAUSE]
For although in a certain sense and for light-minded persons, non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibly represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse. Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things, brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Who said that?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Hesse wrote it. Don’t know if he ever said it.
I. Brand Subversion
Definition and a Few Examples What is Brand Subversion – and what is it not? It is not simply a rant against corporations, big business or globalization…
(Such as Naomi Klein’s [blithering book] no Logo) The subversion of a brand – is the deliberate perversion of a brand to mean something other than its original creator intended.
Brands create meaning, mint language in a social and cultural context, responding to social cues and also manipulating them to shape perceptions and wants. Mega-Brands ultimately liberate themselves from mere logos, and become personae, living celebrity titans in the culture they help create. Examples –Observable Phenomena
Mindbomb.tv – TV Ads twisted into political messages (protest, consciousness raising) The Yes Men – World Trade Organization Imposters (Saboteurs)Martha Stewart Living Magazine – Spoof (Entertainment and profit)
II. The Taxonomy of Brand Subversion – Rogue Brand Subversions
Brand Parody and Brand VandalizingFor entertainment purposes – the spoof is comic relief making light of “serious” things, talking about things that are sacred for profit & entertainment. (Martha Stewart Living Spoof Magazine) Brand Vandalizing can be categorized together with the Parody or Spoof – the motive is sheer joy of iconoclasm and desecration. This is another form of entertainment. (Disney Vandalism)
Stakeholders: Consumers, Cultural Critics, Politically or Artistically Motivated Outsiders, profit-motivated entertainers
Brand Satire – For protest purposes and/or bringing things to light about the subject, conscious-raising and political messaging. This is slightly darker than the lighter-hearted parody or vandalism. (Ad Busters Magazine, MindBomb.tv)
Stakeholders: Cultural Critics, Politically or Artistically Motivated Insiders
Brand Hijacking - The Willful Imposter – The purpose of hijacking a brand is to interact with the natural audience of the brand – to provoke a different response to the brand. (The Yes Men)
Stakeholders: Politically or Artistically Motivated Outsiders
Brand Appropriation -
Artists and others appropriate brands for aesthetic reasons. (Warhol, Dali)
Stakeholders: Consumers, Cultural Critics, Politically or Artistically Motivated Outsiders, profit-motivated entertainers
Commercial Counter-Branding
Parasitic Branding - The creation of deliberate brand confusion, usually for the purposes of attaching to that brand’s profit stream. (Seattle’s Best)
Stakeholders: Competitors, Vendors, other industry stakeholders, (Manufacturers, Retailers or Ad Agencies)
Brand Plagiarizing – Simple copycat of any brand equity elements for profit. (The Yellow Pages; when ALL of the competitors plagiarized the brand cues, they became category generic cues. Fashion Knock-offs)
Stakeholders: Competitors, Vendors, other industry stakeholder, (Manufacturers, Retailers or Ad Agencies)
Controlled Parallel Branding (Counter Cultural)Companies try to generate news and end-run the subversion by creating “parallel brands” and hosting the “means of production” for its consumers:
Subservient chicken – Burger King (show website & discuss uses)Whassup – Budweiser (show website & discuss uses)
The company creates a brand that lives separately,which can do things that the regular brand “can’t. This is the “idiotes” position in literature. Discuss the usefulness of this to a company.
Stakeholder: The Original Brand Maker (Manufacturer, Retailer or Ad Agency)
That's it. It's well articulated. This will forward the discussion around gatekeeping and temporary autonomous zones. There is a difference between what can be done to you and what you must do for yourself if it should happen. You can’t force somebody to see culture as matrix, or make somebody see a Zen koan. In fact, applying force or stress probably slows the process. Just like you can’t make somebody relax, you can only help them.
But back to your point, I know I’m an elitist, which helps me not always be scum. Agnosia makes us slaves to an unseen master. I call this discussion an inquiry into memetics.
Humans studying memetics is like a fish studying water, we’re inquiring into the invisible currents surrounding us.
“The dark ages still reign over all humanity, and the depth and persistence of this domination are only now becoming clear. This Dark Age’s prison has no steel bars, chains, or locks. Instead, it is locked by disorientation and built from misinformation. Caught up in a plethora of conditioned reflexes and driven by the human ego, both warden and prisoner attempt meagerly to compete with God. All are intractably skeptical of what they do not understand. We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.”
~ Cosmography, R. Buckminster Fuller’s final book
Of course it would be a really smart fish that was studying water. Most of the fish I know spend way too much time watching TV and playing poker.
But back to your point, I know I’m an elitist, which helps me not always be scum. Your agnosia makes you a slave to an unseen master. I try to serve myself. That makes me more human than you.
The Matrix is a great way to popularize the story of Socrates and his contemplative perspective. How do you know reality? How do you know you exist?
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Cogito ergo sum. Descartes.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Thinking proves you exist, it doesn’t prove external reality. The Matrix suggests that the mass of humanity does not live in reality, but in a virtual space. You are already in the looking glass, and have always lived in the looking glass, so the looking glass appears normal to you. The Matrix explores the impact of culture on individuals.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
The matrix isn’t real.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Culture is real. The matrix is Culture.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
The matrix is a construct to get some philosophy into a teenage movie.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
No metaphor. The matrix is real. Matrix equals culture.
[PAUSE]
The compacting of technological advancement has compacted our visible event horizon. Fuller talks about this. His point is that since technology is advancing so quickly now, we can’t see the change. It is like the frog in the boiling water I mentioned the other day.
[PAUSE]
When most people think of the word “culture,” they think of festivals, pageants, and languages they don’t understand. Or, they have a vague image of Third World poverty. Or, something else equally limited.
[PAUSE]
Culture equals ideology. An ideology is a meme-plex, a complex organism of memes. Think of meme-plex as a group of people connected by their traveling as a tribe, or as Kurt Vonnegut termed “karass” in Cat’s Cradle. Now, stop looking at the people, and just look at the idea that’s the glue that holds them together.
[PAUSE]
Weapons are an integral part of an ideology, meme-plex, or karass. However, weapons are not permanently tied to specific ideologies. Memetics allows for mini-memes within a meme-plex to be adopted by a competitive meme-plex. So, weapons created by one meme-plex can be adopted by another. The predominate culture has historically been the ideology with the baddest bad-ass weapons. This idea has been made popular to the literati through Guns, Germs and Steal.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Where are you going? This feels like you are just spouting your philosophy. What does any of this have to do with Richard?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Richard had spent some time with The Peace Corps or some other heal-the-Earth non-profit, right?
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Mr. Wilson spent time with The American Friends Service Committee about a year ago.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Richard might have realized what Neo does not.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Which is what exactly?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Zion was created for Neo, and everybody else who rejected the Matrix. But, Zion is also a construct; it is a matrix by another name. Did you know that Republicans run the Peace Corps?
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
What?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Yes, I’ve worked on their ad campaign. I felt funny when I learned that The Peace Corps is run by a director that is appointed by the current president. The Peace Corps exists for people who reject the system, and yet it’s run by the same heads of state that run the system.
When Richard learned that, it could’ve freaked him out.
[PAUSE]
One of the main points I get from The Matrix is that Zionists want to make you aware of where you are. They call this knowledge, “freeing the mind.” But the mind doesn’t become free; it just knows where it is. So, freedom as defined in The Matrix is clearly seeing where you are within the larger system. There is only one matrix. Zion exists within the matrix, it’s just the subset of matrix citizens who comprehend the matrix and wish to substantively alter its course.
War is show business, part of the props, pomp and circumstance of competing cultures.
More and more people are seeing this. I think Microsoft Windows helps to this end.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
How can a software program help us see culture differently?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Windows demonstrates reality within a reality—people are learning fractal structure. Computer users are getting better at distinguishing realities, and meshing realities, because they are learning the distinction and interconnectedness of universes through Microsoft Windows. I hold that culture is on the brink of comprehending what Lucas stated in Star Wars, that corporations have become The Empire—Corporations are the new empire. Like the British Empire, same structure.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
But you are co-mingling things that are real with ideas. And, treating ideas as if they are real, just because we have a word for something.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Gravity is real without a word. Packs of animals have culture without a word for their group dynamics. The Matrix is the contrivance of the culture. It’s the structure that exists beyond any individual. It’s where to hide secret knowledge if your audience isn’t contemporary. The trick is to get commerce to perpetuate your secret knowledge. Either that or find a university or museum to preserve the ideas, which probably won’t happen unless they have some commercial value. In The Matrix, the oracle is a program, the sentinels and Smiths are programs, but they have tangible impacts on the humans they encounter. Publishing is how we play in The Matrix. Publishing a contrarian’s perspective lets future Neos know they are not alone. By publishing, one creates their own Oracle, embedded in The Matrix.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
You are insane.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Certifiably. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am better at what you do than you are. You don’t even know what you do. What do you do? I build crowds for a living, guaranteed. What do you do guaranteed?
Something exciting is about to happen.My fiancé and I are about to make magic. We're running a play we call PROJECT eStoreOpoly.
Finally, some friends will be able to stop worrying me.
Like Fierce Creatures
, the ending to Poker Without Cards was refilmed because early test audiences didn't care for scenes in which one of Liz Boswell's characters keeps getting killed off. This blog provides a brief chronology of the film's history and some never-before-seen information on the film's original ending.My mystical friends call it a quickening, my rockstar friends talk about going through the fame turnstile, a gateway through which one never fully returns. I'm getting married 10/10/10.
My name is Howard W. Campbell, III. I was born with a longer name. I was born pronoid, it means that contrary to all the available evidence, I actually see how people like you. Your perception of life is that it's one long benefit dinner in *your* honor with everybody cheering *you* on and wanting *you* to win everything. I agree. You're simply temporarily miss-sorted. As you get each bit sorted-out, more and more falls inline, and everything gets easier. I'm an elephant too. I'm an artist. I'm a poet with a business plan. And, if I can keep my ego in check, I can come through this perturbation swimmingly, with a renewed ease of imperturbability.
Congratulations to Chris Zubryd who made it work... made a 1,000,000 viewed YouTube Video, now legendary of Howard W. Campbell interviewing Joel Bauer when he's staring at my boss' business card from CCEO and saying to him, "Your business card is crap!"
I recently gave-up my forray into professional media manipulation. I launched Super Ball Marketing. Here was the plan... I do parody ads, distribute them to local Tshirt shops and then pitch the big brands on being able to make their brand subversion problem go away, because I'd simply stop making the Tshirts. I had two problems. First, the big brands didn't care. Second, when I stopped making the shirts that teens liked, they became even more popular and Tshirt profiteers would keep making them. Turns out the gap in supply is what is required to really make a shirt in demand. There was that, plus, the one client who found out I rigged the whole thing didn't get pissed, they got excited and they wanted me to pull that off on their competitors. No good could come from that kind of escalating corporate crime. Most of my longtime readers are familiar with my handiwork in engineering kids to more effectively nag their parents. The PowerPoint i worked on at Lieber Research Worldwide. Well, I proudfully thought I had a more effective way to nag CEOs via Tshirts. I was wrong. My bad. Super Ball Marketing is no more.
Audrey & I started Like A Pro.
For those who were touched adversely by Super Ball Marketing. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Anybody who wasn't heard that before hasn't spent much time with Joe Vitale.
Allow me to begin today's lesson on branding. Branding is a deliberate act of increasing the value of an “owned entity” that is sold for a profit, and brand subversion is the deliberate perversion of a brand to mean something other than its original creator intended, regardless of the impact on the brand’s value.
Don't worry about that compadre, I'll be back. I should warn the intellectualy squeamish that now is the time to close this window and go about your merry way. There are live meme viruses in these hear fnords. That means their are fnords among us. This blog is outsider art, a discussion of the manipulation of meaning in commercial settings. Warning, ingesting these ideas is dangerous to your hegemonic stature. This guitar kills fascists.
While similar subversive tactics and methods may be found in political discourse, and while commercial brand subversion is often created through political motivations, this blog is not political, it's magickal. Fink, it's a jewish name, it means Poker Without Cards isn't a restricted club, it's an open source meme _ool. Notice there's no p in my ool. My detractors say I'm acting as if my poop don't stink. I ask how they know what somebody who's poop don't stink acts like. Everybody I know, when I ask them, we all agree our poop often stinks, except the raw food eaters. Crap, I do know people who say their poop don't stink. Some of them even brag about it. That doesn't bother me though. I certainly don't recall bragging about my poop to them. I send The Faster Webmaster my masterpieces occassionally, but that's because he once asked.
The intention of this blog is to include the widest variety of examples while excluding political subversive messaging, the term “owned entity” has been selected to include unnamed commercial products and exclude profitable ideas without a discrete owner. While owned entities almost always have names, exceptions can be seen in the artist formerly known as Prince and The Beatles’ White Album. An “owned entity” is not limited to a specific SKU, like The White Album on CD digitally re-mastered 2005, or theTravel-Sized Dove Bar. An “owned entity” may include a line of products, like all forms of The Beatles’ White Album or all Dove products. An “owned entity” may include a company like xxx, the owner of Dove products or a band like The Beatles.
Reshma, who is that? Quick question... may I speak to one of your classes about ARGs, Alternate Reality Games for fun and profits? I think it will be a real crowd pleaser.
For the purposes of this blog, I'm excluding governments and political initiatives from my discussion of branding and human engineering—while popularizing voting can be seen as productizing the election process in an age of consumerism, it can also be seen from a myriad of other perspectives and it is often difficult to parse who really benefits from the marketing of political ideas.
In order to broaden the discussion of media studies, we need some common ground of intellectual territory, a taxonomy must be born and codified. May I present to you Liz Boswell's Taxonony of Brand Subversion, circa 2005. These rubrics are based on then recent observations and will likely need to be reshaped and reformed to the ends of those who can repurpose them, be my guest.
You don't even need to cite us ;-)
[PAUSE]
For although in a certain sense and for light-minded persons, non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibly represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse. Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things, brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Who said that?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Hesse wrote it. Don’t know if he ever said it.
I. Brand Subversion
Definition and a Few Examples What is Brand Subversion – and what is it not? It is not simply a rant against corporations, big business or globalization…
(Such as Naomi Klein’s [blithering book] no Logo) The subversion of a brand – is the deliberate perversion of a brand to mean something other than its original creator intended.
Brands create meaning, mint language in a social and cultural context, responding to social cues and also manipulating them to shape perceptions and wants. Mega-Brands ultimately liberate themselves from mere logos, and become personae, living celebrity titans in the culture they help create. Examples –Observable Phenomena
Mindbomb.tv – TV Ads twisted into political messages (protest, consciousness raising) The Yes Men – World Trade Organization Imposters (Saboteurs)Martha Stewart Living Magazine – Spoof (Entertainment and profit)
II. The Taxonomy of Brand Subversion – Rogue Brand Subversions
Brand Parody and Brand VandalizingFor entertainment purposes – the spoof is comic relief making light of “serious” things, talking about things that are sacred for profit & entertainment. (Martha Stewart Living Spoof Magazine) Brand Vandalizing can be categorized together with the Parody or Spoof – the motive is sheer joy of iconoclasm and desecration. This is another form of entertainment. (Disney Vandalism)
Stakeholders: Consumers, Cultural Critics, Politically or Artistically Motivated Outsiders, profit-motivated entertainers
Brand Satire – For protest purposes and/or bringing things to light about the subject, conscious-raising and political messaging. This is slightly darker than the lighter-hearted parody or vandalism. (Ad Busters Magazine, MindBomb.tv)
Stakeholders: Cultural Critics, Politically or Artistically Motivated Insiders
Brand Hijacking - The Willful Imposter – The purpose of hijacking a brand is to interact with the natural audience of the brand – to provoke a different response to the brand. (The Yes Men)
Stakeholders: Politically or Artistically Motivated Outsiders
Brand Appropriation -
Artists and others appropriate brands for aesthetic reasons. (Warhol, Dali)
Stakeholders: Consumers, Cultural Critics, Politically or Artistically Motivated Outsiders, profit-motivated entertainers
Commercial Counter-Branding
Parasitic Branding - The creation of deliberate brand confusion, usually for the purposes of attaching to that brand’s profit stream. (Seattle’s Best)
Stakeholders: Competitors, Vendors, other industry stakeholders, (Manufacturers, Retailers or Ad Agencies)
Brand Plagiarizing – Simple copycat of any brand equity elements for profit. (The Yellow Pages; when ALL of the competitors plagiarized the brand cues, they became category generic cues. Fashion Knock-offs)
Stakeholders: Competitors, Vendors, other industry stakeholder, (Manufacturers, Retailers or Ad Agencies)
Controlled Parallel Branding (Counter Cultural)Companies try to generate news and end-run the subversion by creating “parallel brands” and hosting the “means of production” for its consumers:
Subservient chicken – Burger King (show website & discuss uses)Whassup – Budweiser (show website & discuss uses)
The company creates a brand that lives separately,which can do things that the regular brand “can’t. This is the “idiotes” position in literature. Discuss the usefulness of this to a company.
Stakeholder: The Original Brand Maker (Manufacturer, Retailer or Ad Agency)
That's it. It's well articulated. This will forward the discussion around gatekeeping and temporary autonomous zones. There is a difference between what can be done to you and what you must do for yourself if it should happen. You can’t force somebody to see culture as matrix, or make somebody see a Zen koan. In fact, applying force or stress probably slows the process. Just like you can’t make somebody relax, you can only help them.
But back to your point, I know I’m an elitist, which helps me not always be scum. Agnosia makes us slaves to an unseen master. I call this discussion an inquiry into memetics.
Humans studying memetics is like a fish studying water, we’re inquiring into the invisible currents surrounding us.
“The dark ages still reign over all humanity, and the depth and persistence of this domination are only now becoming clear. This Dark Age’s prison has no steel bars, chains, or locks. Instead, it is locked by disorientation and built from misinformation. Caught up in a plethora of conditioned reflexes and driven by the human ego, both warden and prisoner attempt meagerly to compete with God. All are intractably skeptical of what they do not understand. We are powerfully imprisoned in these Dark Ages simply by the terms in which we have been conditioned to think.”
~ Cosmography, R. Buckminster Fuller’s final book
Of course it would be a really smart fish that was studying water. Most of the fish I know spend way too much time watching TV and playing poker.
But back to your point, I know I’m an elitist, which helps me not always be scum. Your agnosia makes you a slave to an unseen master. I try to serve myself. That makes me more human than you.
The Matrix is a great way to popularize the story of Socrates and his contemplative perspective. How do you know reality? How do you know you exist?
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Cogito ergo sum. Descartes.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Thinking proves you exist, it doesn’t prove external reality. The Matrix suggests that the mass of humanity does not live in reality, but in a virtual space. You are already in the looking glass, and have always lived in the looking glass, so the looking glass appears normal to you. The Matrix explores the impact of culture on individuals.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
The matrix isn’t real.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Culture is real. The matrix is Culture.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
The matrix is a construct to get some philosophy into a teenage movie.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
No metaphor. The matrix is real. Matrix equals culture.
[PAUSE]
The compacting of technological advancement has compacted our visible event horizon. Fuller talks about this. His point is that since technology is advancing so quickly now, we can’t see the change. It is like the frog in the boiling water I mentioned the other day.
[PAUSE]
When most people think of the word “culture,” they think of festivals, pageants, and languages they don’t understand. Or, they have a vague image of Third World poverty. Or, something else equally limited.
[PAUSE]
Culture equals ideology. An ideology is a meme-plex, a complex organism of memes. Think of meme-plex as a group of people connected by their traveling as a tribe, or as Kurt Vonnegut termed “karass” in Cat’s Cradle. Now, stop looking at the people, and just look at the idea that’s the glue that holds them together.
[PAUSE]
Weapons are an integral part of an ideology, meme-plex, or karass. However, weapons are not permanently tied to specific ideologies. Memetics allows for mini-memes within a meme-plex to be adopted by a competitive meme-plex. So, weapons created by one meme-plex can be adopted by another. The predominate culture has historically been the ideology with the baddest bad-ass weapons. This idea has been made popular to the literati through Guns, Germs and Steal.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Where are you going? This feels like you are just spouting your philosophy. What does any of this have to do with Richard?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Richard had spent some time with The Peace Corps or some other heal-the-Earth non-profit, right?
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Mr. Wilson spent time with The American Friends Service Committee about a year ago.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Richard might have realized what Neo does not.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
Which is what exactly?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Zion was created for Neo, and everybody else who rejected the Matrix. But, Zion is also a construct; it is a matrix by another name. Did you know that Republicans run the Peace Corps?
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
What?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Yes, I’ve worked on their ad campaign. I felt funny when I learned that The Peace Corps is run by a director that is appointed by the current president. The Peace Corps exists for people who reject the system, and yet it’s run by the same heads of state that run the system.
When Richard learned that, it could’ve freaked him out.
[PAUSE]
One of the main points I get from The Matrix is that Zionists want to make you aware of where you are. They call this knowledge, “freeing the mind.” But the mind doesn’t become free; it just knows where it is. So, freedom as defined in The Matrix is clearly seeing where you are within the larger system. There is only one matrix. Zion exists within the matrix, it’s just the subset of matrix citizens who comprehend the matrix and wish to substantively alter its course.
War is show business, part of the props, pomp and circumstance of competing cultures.
More and more people are seeing this. I think Microsoft Windows helps to this end.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
How can a software program help us see culture differently?
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Windows demonstrates reality within a reality—people are learning fractal structure. Computer users are getting better at distinguishing realities, and meshing realities, because they are learning the distinction and interconnectedness of universes through Microsoft Windows. I hold that culture is on the brink of comprehending what Lucas stated in Star Wars, that corporations have become The Empire—Corporations are the new empire. Like the British Empire, same structure.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
But you are co-mingling things that are real with ideas. And, treating ideas as if they are real, just because we have a word for something.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Gravity is real without a word. Packs of animals have culture without a word for their group dynamics. The Matrix is the contrivance of the culture. It’s the structure that exists beyond any individual. It’s where to hide secret knowledge if your audience isn’t contemporary. The trick is to get commerce to perpetuate your secret knowledge. Either that or find a university or museum to preserve the ideas, which probably won’t happen unless they have some commercial value. In The Matrix, the oracle is a program, the sentinels and Smiths are programs, but they have tangible impacts on the humans they encounter. Publishing is how we play in The Matrix. Publishing a contrarian’s perspective lets future Neos know they are not alone. By publishing, one creates their own Oracle, embedded in The Matrix.
DR. WILLIAM FINK:
You are insane.
HOWARD CAMPBELL:
Certifiably. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am better at what you do than you are. You don’t even know what you do. What do you do? I build crowds for a living, guaranteed. What do you do guaranteed?
posted by Ben Mack at
6:07 AM
0 Comments
Monday, February 22, 2010
The Idiot Problem Resolved.
My name is Howard W. Campbell, 3rd and I am a recovering advertising executive. Whatever you do, don't think of an elephant.Today, I'm filing my report on The Idiot Problem. If you need to jump to the end, rest assured that the idiot problem is resolved.
My fellow Americans, I thank a merciful God... and I am sure each and every one of us... will thank that Supreme Power... whatever we conceive that power to be...
...that peace is at hand.
The threat of Idiot Domination has been quelled. You no longer are required to have a government liscence to perform magic. Magic shows you how your brain isn't working quite right. Magic is something I did for a living before I became a career ad man, I was a theatrical magician. Today, I do magic without cards. I'll take you to an altered state of consciousness from which you will never fully return. By reading my words you are buying your ticket, enjoy the magic carpet ride.
Warren Whitlock reminds me, "I'll tell you what the human soul is; It's the part of you that knows when your brain isn't working right." ~Kurt Vonnegut
I'm the guy companies hire to help them figure out how to rig a system, I treat point-systems with the irreverence I see them deserving. Can we all agree modern economics is the most subjectively sophisticated point-system humans have yet voted into creation by simple adoption? For a brief history of economic systems of our millenia please read Neal Stephenson The Baroque Trilogy.
Currently, as a performing philosopher, I've been invited to brainstorm with a broad cross-section of strategists; in fewer than 3-years as a qualitative researcher with Lieberman Research Worldwide I conducted more 1:1 depth interviews than most academic social scientists will in a lifetime which has given me a broad cross-section of American consumers.
Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a researcher and later as a philosopher, I came into close contact with American business affairs. With the inabilities that predictably come from a lack of listening, corporations would dispense me to tell them what they customers and prospects were saying, thinking and feeling about their named products and services. My observations on their stupefication was not only unsolicited, but unwelcome. Suffice it to say that I observed continual blathering and punishment for a lack of display of fake patriotism, and I began to realize that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming a famous magician or creating sustainable streams of income for myself: I wanted to help the downtrodden magicians. I have since recreated my definition of a magician to be those who recreate themselves to better serve themselves.
I was paid to conduct primary research on both American consumers and American business affairs. I was never hired to report on my meta-observations. I dropped out of a Ph.D. program in Media Studies at RPI largely because I didn't fit in. I withdrew before they spat me out like the cancer I am to their vacuous infrastructure. Cultures of humans appear to me as opperating along similar biological principles as our bodies, when an irritant appears inside the system it is best to put a wall of gunk around it and excrete it from the systems through whatever exit is closest. My time was well rewarded, I learned best practices of distance teaching from a sage academic researcher.
I'm more interested in studying braingasms than I am in learning the nuances of Academia's popular ken. Besides, have you ever attempted to make your way through something like Harvard Press' Value Migration? It's like Dan Kennedy made complicated.
So you, my dear reader, must be some sort of left-brain word fetishist to be dreaming into these multiple-braingasms. Or, perhaps you are paid to be here. Last summer a private investigator made $30k researching me, and telling his client what he wanted to hear: "Ben Mack is Salty Droid." If I had a nickel for every dollar Ben Mack has cost me I could already be living the four-hour-work-week. But from what I heard another so-called professional snoop is barking down my trail. So, for their dinner, dining and dancing pleasures do I write this treatise on The Idiot Problem.
Before we begin...
The Idiot Problem is bigger than you think. In order to help you think bigger, I want you to imagine that only a tiny sliver of society thinks like you. That's not hard for you to do because you know there are not that many people who think like you. So, where's the common ground?
WHERE'S THE COMMON GROUND?
Without common ground, us travelers on Spaceship Earth won't be able to embrace the oneness so many spiritualists profess. Common ground can come into striking relief when you speak with thousands of people one-on-one over a short period of time. I think of the time I spent doing consumer advocacy, advocating the emotionals needs, wants and desires of those prepared to give them money to those who can sell them what they want.
As a branding guy, I also reminded the corporations they are supposed to give the people what they need. That's really the secret to making gobbs of money... Sell people what they want and give them what they need. Brands are named products or services that command irrationally high premium prices. I see advertising as spell casting. Many puritans who work in advertising have told me personally that my seeing ads as spellcasting makes me a Devil worshipper. I see them as morally presumptious and frankly what they think of me is none of my business.
And, I want to give you the two biggest observations I have. These aren't like amazing aha's or anything. However, they are what I see as the two biggest common threads running through these United States...
My meta-observations are two. When I hear common ideas describe across didn't populations, I call these ideas a common thread. I've observed two major common threads. The first common thread has to do with Americans describing Themsleves--remarkably almost everybody sees themselves as time strapped, living a hurly-burly schedule. The second common thread has to do with Others. To a lesser extent, people describe themselves as seeing their life infected by swarms of idiots.
Last spring I was invited to see a presentation by Walter F. Starbuck on The Idiot Problem. Please realize I was on tilt when I accepted the invitation. Ben Mack made a guest appearance in Boise, ID and I had to curry him out of town after the Secretary of Energy for The Sate of Idaho said to Ben, "You shouldn't have said that to X, he's CIA. He'll make you disappear." Three-days later the police came to my apartment. Self-reportedly they had an anonomous tip that I was attempting to hurt myself. With that story they don't need a warrant to enter my home.
The following week, I was invited to a strategy session of a group of people who called themselves Libertarians. They appeared to me as fascists. They were armed, they were scared of their secrets getting out and some of them wore uniforms. Personally, I think a Libertarian uniform makes about as much sense as military justice. Call it what you like, military uniforms appear to me as a force of hegemony, where the uniform makes a soldier the message and the messenger with a liscence to kill. Admittedly, I'm nervous. It doesn't help that I'm in rural Idaho and I was recently threatened by a State official.
Walter F. Starbuck extolled, "You can either see idiots as unwitting accomplices or as active, conceptive ideologists, who make a living undermining the collective good." That was the moment I knew I was in danger. I had never gotten myself into so much danger as being misinvited into this den. Shit. The trick is not to flinch, a lesson hard learned by our warrior protagonist in Shades of Grey. You train for this very moment, when your whole world changes around you and you are actually safe so long as you don't suddenly start flinching or getting weird. Sociopaths who kill for a living can smell your trepidation to murder.
Important safety tip #1 Pretend like you don't see what's happening. If you've blown your "clue-less" cover then... Important safety tip #2 Choose A or B, not both!
A) Pretend you don't care.
B) Pretend to root them on.
Important safety tip #3 If they offer you money, take it.
These are corporate safety tips. Please don't run corporate games on Jedis, it aggrivates the Jedi and he is less likely to gift you his best mojo.
Can we be real for a moment? If it is so rare as to create a run-away-profitable-trend, why would the best strategists want to work anyplace other than in entertainment? I'm just sayin' a lot of money gets spent on games and those who can generate sustainable temporary autonomous zones have a leg up on those who can't speak basic memetics. So it goes.
So, I get invited to mastermind with some freaky cats from time to time about how they can increase their profitability. The #1 problem is always what to do with all the idiots in the world. They have a wonderful product that isn't being bought because of all the idiots in the world.
The ones that feel merely icky are where I asked to spin a lesser financial vehicle. Yuck. Sure, we can use best-practices of parrity products... Like Gossages pink air campaign... but that aint right. Sure I whore myself out. I like to see myself as a high-priced whore, but I'm often more of a poet.
I'm better than most at being able to articulate how people see the world. The key is to simply listen for their visual metaphors. The key to research is to see the passions. We sell these as 'insights.' Here's my finding, when Walter F. Starbuck spoke in totalitarian terms of accomplices undermining the collective good, I found myself hearing a fascist. That's why I named this post THE IDIOT PROBLEM Resolved.
I want to difuse the energy.
Nobody is openly supporting fascism. Thank Goodness! That's an improvement, right? We can all agree that there is some fucked-up shit going on. Even the snoop getting paid to read this who more than likely has purchased a product on self-defense sold by a John Carlton letter and doesn't know what the heck kind of profiling doesn't make sense to him, to you I am sorry for making your head hurt. But not really. Dude, like fucking shit split the money a little, right? You made $30k studying me to come up with a false finding and you call that research? If I did what you did for a living I'm just saying I'd be better at giving my customer what they need.
What does the world need? It appears that we can all agree the world needs fewer idiots. There is only one book I have read on politics that starts with the premise of... I know they are smart people, so I know they can't possibly be the idiots I sometimes see them as being with their politics. It's a conservative book, posing as a liberal book. That's genius right? It leads democrats into a conservative agenda.
Advertising that looks like advertising is 3rd rate advertising...
... gar
posted by Ben Mack at
11:33 AM
0 Comments
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Good Energy Network presents...
a Super Ball Marketing production of the...B.Y.O.M. Seminar
Bring Your Own Media
&
THINK 2 "W♥Ws" AHEAD
Twitter ❥ Please
JULY, 2009
Pasadena, CA
more INFO coming soon
Bring Your Own Media
&
THINK 2 "W♥Ws" AHEAD
Twitter ❥ Please
JULY, 2009
Pasadena, CA
more INFO coming soon
#BYOM 2.5 Day Seminar in California.
Marketing Is Evil;
FRIDAY Ad Agency seminar $1,297
Marketing Is Not Evil?
SATURDAY & half-day SUNDAY Independent Media seminar $597
Scholarships will be made available for prolific social media artists of GOOD ENERGY... ask me about iT on Twitter @BenMack
FRIDAY Ad Agency seminar $1,297
Marketing Is Not Evil?
SATURDAY & half-day SUNDAY Independent Media seminar $597
Scholarships will be made available for prolific social media artists of GOOD ENERGY... ask me about iT on Twitter @BenMack
posted by Ben Mack at
11:21 AM
0 Comments
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
#GoodEnergy APARTMENT MANAGERS
Original ARTWORK by
~Bobby Campbell
BUCKY VIRUS... "The Things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done — that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual." My Mom did this...
~Letter to 'Micheal' (16 February 1970) Micheal was a 10 year old boy who had inquired in a letter as to whether Fuller was a "doer" or a "thinker".
~Bobby Campbell
BUCKY VIRUS... "The Things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done — that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual." My Mom did this...
~Letter to 'Micheal' (16 February 1970) Micheal was a 10 year old boy who had inquired in a letter as to whether Fuller was a "doer" or a "thinker".
posted by Ben Mack at
11:22 PM
0 Comments
Saturday, January 31, 2009
I created a monster ~Me
iT started innocently enough... I called iT Enchanted Marketing.Introducing...
Enchanted Marketing
by Dr. Ben Mack
Actually, I simply came up with the construct, Lenette Patterson is the genius who first made it work. Usually, in academia the person who first makes a hypothesis works gets the glory... so the real glory is owed to the Morrisstown, TN weight-loss genius Lynette Patterson.
The techniques of my self-replicating-physical-brochure will be detailed in Pheonix, AZ at a mobile seminar that launches at 9:23 AM 4/18 from the San Marcos Crown Plaza Hotel. Shhh... They don't know I'm producing from seminar at their facility. You'll meet my mom and you better play nice with her. And if we get a title sponsor for $3500 you'll meet Jairek Robbins, the peek performance strategist for Robbins Research International.
posted by Ben Mack at
12:23 AM
0 Comments
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Ben Mack bio...
Ben Mack is the marketing genius credited with having sold
a-quarter-billion-dollars in yo-yo's in two years.
He has received two national awards from the American Marketing
Association: an Effie for his strategy on YoMega Yo-Yos and the Edison
award for the launch of the Michael Jordan Cologne.
Three years ago Mack left the corporate life, as Senior Vice President
at BBDO, Director of Brand Strategy on Cingular where he was lead
strategist on a half-billion-dollar advertising budget.
Ben is author of a wide variety of books from his bestselling business
book Think Two Products Ahead, to the best selling book on fire eating
ever published, How To Eat Fire With Little or No Pain and the
conscious thriller, Poker Without Cards.
Currently, Ben Mack consults with and coaches established entrepreneurs
and business owners about how to maximize profitability by Thinking Two
Products Ahead.
Images:
Ben Mack Head Shot:
http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii287/JMarkH_bucket/benmack.jpg
Ben Mack Eats Fire:
http://i267.photobucket.com/albums/ii287/JMarkH_bucket/beneatsfire.jpg
Best,
Mark
a-quarter-billion-dollars in yo-yo's in two years.
He has received two national awards from the American Marketing
Association: an Effie for his strategy on YoMega Yo-Yos and the Edison
award for the launch of the Michael Jordan Cologne.
Three years ago Mack left the corporate life, as Senior Vice President
at BBDO, Director of Brand Strategy on Cingular where he was lead
strategist on a half-billion-dollar advertising budget.
Ben is author of a wide variety of books from his bestselling business
book Think Two Products Ahead, to the best selling book on fire eating
ever published, How To Eat Fire With Little or No Pain and the
conscious thriller, Poker Without Cards.
Currently, Ben Mack consults with and coaches established entrepreneurs
and business owners about how to maximize profitability by Thinking Two
Products Ahead.
Images:
Ben Mack Head Shot:
http://i267.photobucket.com/
Ben Mack Eats Fire:
http://i267.photobucket.com/
Best,
Mark
posted by Ben Mack at
6:41 PM
0 Comments
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
QUESTIONS=> Millionaire Prep School
We received 7 questions from folks joining The Millionaire Prep School...
1. Enchanteur - "THE BEST COACHING?"
Enchanteur, you will need to define best coaching for what? There are many great coaches available. However, You don't want tax advice from a relationship coach.
2. Bounama - "HOW I GET FREE EBOOKS WITH RESELL
RIGHTS? HOW TO GET THE BEST SUPPORT ONLINE FOR
WEBSITES DEVELOPING AND MAINTENANCE?"
Bounama, you are asking two questions...
Free eBooks with resale rights? If you aren't willing to pay for them, why should anybody be willing to pay you for them? Best support online for website development? The Faster Webmaster.
3. Eileen - "What is the least expensive and most effective way to
market if I am not technologically gifted? I don't know or honestly
want to spend my time learning how to create a web page ... but I
would like a simple way to use blogs, adwords, or whatever would
be effective without a lot of technical ability."
EILEEN, I love your question. Blogger.com is the easiest way.
4. Lee - "hello, Ben what is a good business to get in on today
market? Is it a real estate?"
Lee, I'm not in Real Estate so I can't tell you that. A good business is that which offers a service for which people are already lining up to buy.
5. Sarah - "Where do I start? What's next?"
Sarah, you are already started. http://SupersizeMyList.com is a solid program.
6. Fiona - "What I can sell on line?"
Fiona, just about anything.
7. Matthew - "How do I learn to harness the power of persuasion in 30 days or less?"
MATTHEW, great question. Please see http://SubliminalPersuasionBook.com
1. Enchanteur - "THE BEST COACHING?"
Enchanteur, you will need to define best coaching for what? There are many great coaches available. However, You don't want tax advice from a relationship coach.
2. Bounama - "HOW I GET FREE EBOOKS WITH RESELL
RIGHTS? HOW TO GET THE BEST SUPPORT ONLINE FOR
WEBSITES DEVELOPING AND MAINTENANCE?"
Bounama, you are asking two questions...
Free eBooks with resale rights? If you aren't willing to pay for them, why should anybody be willing to pay you for them? Best support online for website development? The Faster Webmaster.
3. Eileen - "What is the least expensive and most effective way to
market if I am not technologically gifted? I don't know or honestly
want to spend my time learning how to create a web page ... but I
would like a simple way to use blogs, adwords, or whatever would
be effective without a lot of technical ability."
EILEEN, I love your question. Blogger.com is the easiest way.
4. Lee - "hello, Ben what is a good business to get in on today
market? Is it a real estate?"
Lee, I'm not in Real Estate so I can't tell you that. A good business is that which offers a service for which people are already lining up to buy.
5. Sarah - "Where do I start? What's next?"
Sarah, you are already started. http://SupersizeMyList.com is a solid program.
6. Fiona - "What I can sell on line?"
Fiona, just about anything.
7. Matthew - "How do I learn to harness the power of persuasion in 30 days or less?"
MATTHEW, great question. Please see http://SubliminalPersuasionBook.com
posted by Ben Mack at
9:18 AM
1 Comments
Monday, March 17, 2008
Dexterity
Finger Ballet...
I remember seeing this on The Tonight Show Live
I've got eyes for you...
I was in Hat$ Off working with these guys...
Shameless self-promotion...
Why Bill Hicks is perhaps the most influential comedian
of the 20th Century
This guy TAUGHT HIMSELF HOW TO SING BACKWARDS
posted by Ben Mack at
4:25 PM
0 Comments
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
look Ma, i'm in Thailand...
as if By ~ Chance :-)
it's not Luck
posted by Ben Mack at
5:25 AM
0 Comments
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
ender.
is this any good?
it's not a How To, but a state of the Union.
Ender, WE need a better HOW TO than FREEBookWorthReading.com.
Lt. Kaffee is going to try
and work a little magic here.
He'll try a little misdirection.
Astonishing stories of rituals.
Dazzle you with official-sounding
terms like "Code Red".
He may even try to cut
into a few officers.
He has no evidence,
but it'll be entertaining.
But in the end, all this magic
will not obscure the fact...
gar.
posted by Ben Mack at
4:59 PM
0 Comments
Friday, October 05, 2007
this says it all...
Sometimes...
i'm just a litte FUZZY & out of focusthank you for waiting for me
to adjust myself
i found a cure for Monkey Brain
as you asked me, 2.
party for MY Mom starts 10/23
posted by Ben Mack at
3:33 AM
0 Comments
PLEASE==> help me WRITE Ken McArthur a love note...
Fellow IM Lovers,Please type Ken McArthur a love-note on his blog...
==> http://BeTheLegend.com/kenBRANDING & LOVE are synonymous.
Ken embarrassed me by having 6 folks
call me a "genius." Well played Ken.
I love him, too. Now, I'd like YOUR HELP
getting him back and call him PAPPA BEAR!
Ken is a big lovable BEAR.
Please leave your note here...
==> http://BeTheLegend.com/ken
BEN MACK:
How you really think I'm doin'
with Ken?
ROSS GOLDBERG:
You kidding? He loves you.
BEN MACK:
You don't think I'm kissing
his ass or anything, do you?
ROSS GOLDBERG:
You're telling him what he wants
to hear. That ain't the same
thing as kissing his ass.
BEN MACK:
Yeah, I mean, I was at JV ALERT.
I loved it. I'm not lyin' to the
guy.
ROSS GOLDBERG:
No. That's why
it ain't ass-kissin'.
BEN MACK:
What you're doin' is genuine,
and he knows it.
ROSS GOLDBERG:
I like you, Ben.
Always have. Always will.
[ SNAPS FINGER & VANISHES ]
posted by Ben Mack at
12:54 AM
0 Comments
Thursday, October 04, 2007
==> Ken McArthur's LOVE FEST!
Ken McArthur through me...a Love FEST and I want to send some scrumptious LOVE with some delicious words Ken's way... Here's a transcription from the party:
[ BEGIN TRANSCRIPT ]
The-- These aren't my clothes ! ! !
==> http://BeTheLegend.com/ken
[ can you hear KEN SINGING... ]
A little bitty tear let me down Spoilin' my act as a clown I was all made up not to frown But a little bitty tear let me down
==> http://BeTheLegend.com/ken
A little bitty tear let me down Spoilin' my act as a clown Ross Goldberg, where are you? Come here. Come on, boy. Get in here. You get in here now. Get in there. Go on.
[ SONG On Radio ]
...you said you were leavin' tomorrow... That today was our last day I said there'd be no sorrow That I'd laugh when you walked away [ HORN SOUNDING ] A little bitty tear let me down Spoiled my act as a clown...
==> http://BeTheLegend.com/ken
I had it made up not to make a frown But a little bitty tear let me down Good mornin',
Ken. Hey, Ross Goldberg. Heather Vale, Warren Whitlock, & Donna Fox. I love you!
==> http://BeTheLegend.com/ken
posted by Ben Mack at
11:47 PM
0 Comments
==> Ken McArthur is a handsome man <==
especially...
when Ken's selling my three...
...when Ken McArthur is selling my...
==> My 3 most-recent books!
Who wrote This... ?
when Ken's selling my three...
...when Ken McArthur is selling my...
==> My 3 most-recent books!
Who wrote This... ?
posted by Ben Mack at
11:46 PM
0 Comments
Potential. Realized.
My greatest honor last year was working with the fine folks at ASU. What most folks heard, when I told them what I was working on was...
posted by Ben Mack at
5:14 AM
0 Comments
Potential realized...
why are the BIG stars so often white? Oh, the thinks you can think... And Left! Think of Left! And think about BEFT. Why is it that Beft always goes to the left? And why is it so many things go to the Right? You can think about that until Saturday night. Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try.
posted by Ben Mack at
5:05 AM
0 Comments
i worked on this...
Good to know you, Everette Freeman, Dwight O' Neill & Marshall Thurber.
Everette, in what ways might i...
posted by Ben Mack at
4:46 AM
1 Comments
what's your DyVal in The Reputation Economy?
what's your DyVal in an attention Economy?
posted by Ben Mack at
4:43 AM
0 Comments
Monday, October 01, 2007
The Structure of Scientific Revolution
Kuhn's approach to the history and philosophy of science has been described as focusing on conceptual issues: what sorts of ideas were thinkable at a particular time? What sorts of intellectual options and strategies were available to people during a given period? What types of lexicons and terminology were known and employed during certain epochs? Stressing the importance of not attributing modern modes of thought to historical actors, Kuhn's book argues that the evolution of scientific theory does not emerge from the straightforward accumulation of facts, but rather from a set of changing intellectual circumstances and possibilities. Such an approach is largely commensurate with the general historical school of non-linear history. He's talking about how evolution affects Network Science.
posted by Ben Mack at
2:40 PM
0 Comments
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Previous Posts
- take 2
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- How to Bet on Research
- Brand Subversion & Fierce Creatures
- The Idiot Problem Resolved.
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