Wassupp And How Do You Happy?

Garth Beyer

The Heinz ketchup bottle I used over the weekend has a “How Do You Happy?” label on it. Heinz wants you to interact, to share what makes you happy or so I think that’s what it wants you to do, it wasn’t very clear.

Heinz, rather, whatever agency behind the not-so-creative idea is appealing to the mass that uses ketchup, but it doesn’t transfer over well. Not every ketchup user is happy, wants to be happy or cares to share what makes them happy – they just want some ketchup with their fries.

Budweiser has made some wacky commercials. The ones that stand out to me are the Wassup commercials. At the time of the commercials, the phrase “Wasssuppp” was the most popular term Budweiser drinkers used, not all, but enough to make a commercial about it. “Wasssupp” became a trigger for drinking Bud.

Heinz is attempting to turn what makes you happy into a trigger for wanting to use Heinz ketchup. While you can’t argue happiness isn’t universal, trying to get millions of people to associate a bottle of ketchup with their own happiness isn’t logical because everyone’s answer to what their happy is is different.

What’s the difference between “Wasssupp” and “How Do you Happy?” – a shared experience. Budweiser took a common phrase said by Budweiser drinkers (and beer drinkers in general) and turned it into a trigger. When someone says “Wassupp,” you think of Budweiser. When I say what’s your happy? Ketchup isn’t up there.

The guideline: treat different customers differently. Understand what they value, not in terms of personal happiness, but in terms of their desired experience. Bud is better to drink with your buddies. Ketchup isn’t better to eat when you’re doing what makes you happy, unless of course, eating fries is your life’s purpose.

 

Stay Positive & Shared Experiences Was Everything (And Still Is)

What A Real Impresario Needs

Garth Beyer

Balancing Impresario

It’s an odd feeling when someone tells me that they have my back because half of what I do I do to show one person can do it, that you don’t need a safety net, that one doing risky work doesn’t need someone to have their back.

What every impresario needs is not the hearing that someone will pick up the ball if they drop it, nor is it the knowing someone has their back; it’s the feeling of it all. The feeling someone is there to back you up, catch you if you fall.

Don’t tell your impresario friends you’re there if they fail. Make them feel you’re there by supporting their forward direction, appreciating their work, asking them questions that help them challenge their lizard brain thoughts.

Support is a funny thing. You don’t need an impresario to fail and fall to show your support. Giving them motivation to keep building their momentum – that’s the support impresarios need, that’s the trust that makes them continue doing work that matters.

The way an impresario sees it is this: they feel you’ve got their back when they see, hear, and feel you’ve got their front.

In the world of art, moving forward is so much more important and so much more difficult than dusting shoulders off and getting up after falling down.

Show you’re there to help forward movement and any impresario will feel you’re there to have their back, because, really, that’s the easier of the two, the safer of the two.

If your there in the front helping them do the work that matters, there’s no reason you wouldn’t be there if things were to go south.

 

Stay Positive & The Quickest Way To Become An Impresario Is To Support One

p.s. if you’re an impresario yourself, share this post with friends. they may need to read it more than you

Photo credit

Bottled Up

Garth Beyer

You can’t be moved by a presentation a week after as passionately as you could be moved the evening of. Inspiration can’t be bottled and saved up for later. Motivation is also addictive for this reason.

We love the feeling of creative potential, of assertive ambition, of being fueled with passion, but the moment the creative spark ignites, so does the lizard brain tricking us to wait until a better moment, to use our knowledge on our next project, not the one we’re currently working on.

Since we don’t recognize it’s the lizard brain speaking up, we feel bad a week later when we’re reminded about the seminar we went to and how we haven’t put to action anything we learned from it. I recall myself saying how ready and stoked I was to write my next novel after a 2-day writing conference. I never did. So what’s the best solution?

Go to another conference, watch another Ted talk, listen to another podcast episode because the energy makes us happy again, which leads to an addictive mentality, a downhill spiral of bottled up and wasted inspiration.

What has helped me prevent wasting creative energy is to remind myself I don’t need to create something huge or wait for something big to release the passion. Immediately after attending a second writing conference, I wrote an incomplete story. I spent about 20 minutes writing while I ate lunch.

Two things happened.

One, I learned inspiration is quickly spent. The creative juice waned after 15 minutes of writing, but when I first put pen to paper, I thought I was pumped up enough to write for hours.

Two, I was proud of myself later in the day and even a week later when I thought back to the conference and how I used the inspiration. Even though it was a short incomplete story about an irish boxer who had a fascination with things colored orange, I had conquered my lizard brain.

Don’t bottle up your inspiration. Don’t hang on to motivation. Put it to use, make something, write something, do something differently, and remember, it doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be.

 

Stay Positive & You’ll Often Come Out Even More Inspired (by yourself!)

What Is Efficiency Anyway?

Garth Beyer

When you say you’ve done a lot, do you also say how well you did it? Likely didn’t think about it.

On the flip side, when you’ve done something really awesome, borderline remarkable, you’re sure to say just how long it took you.

In the game of making things better, we swap quality out with speed. We call ourselves efficient in terms of how much we get done instead of looking at the quality of our work. Speed instead of quality.

Speed is an objective community perception, easily recognizable and measured.

Quality, though, is more subjective. Quality can be compared with what everyone in the agency has made or it can be compared with your personal average. A bit more hard to measure.

In the marketing world, we have enough of the pace-type efficiency. We’ve spent years mastering it, creating charts, laying out entire office cultures based on it. In terms of speed, I’d say we’re near maximum efficiency.

Now that capacity has been met, we have an opportunity to redefine efficiency and pursue filling the void we’ve ignored all these years. We can stop trying to check more boxes and start starring them because we’ve done work that matters, work that’s special.

Being forward, it’s hard to create remarkable work (art) because it’s easier to see ourselves working faster, checking more boxes, getting to more meetings than it is to image ourselves making something remarkable.

To do so, we have to think differently, talk differently, and start seeing things differently.

The neat thing about remarkable work is it’s rooted in the saying, “we’re doing X, but just a bit differently.” No need to invent a new wheel, just think differently about the one you’re using. Only then can you begin giving meaning to the term “efficiency” again. And for that, thank you.

 

Stay Positive & A Little Different Can Go A Long Way

Why You Pick Up To Read

Garth Beyer

I’ve never understood why people write books with the purpose of offering a blanket solution or mindset for working with clients, starting a business or becoming successful. Equally so, I can’t fathom how people purchase them.

I simply can’t buy into the idea that what an author may be suggesting works for any and every situation I could find myself in.

Yet, authors sell books in the form of fake guarantees, rather, we assume there’s a guarantee that if we follow all the steps described then we will become equally successful.

False.

The books that matter, the books I can buy into are the ones that get you to think differently. Seth Godin, Tom Robbins, Gregory Berns, to name a few. They make you uncomfortable. They make you feel slightly inadequate, but feed you the motivation to be different, to claim your self-worth, to think about things differently.

The interesting angle to all of this is a book’s benefits is based on the mindset you go in with when reading it. Are you looking for safety, certainty, security? Or are you looking to be challenged, for a fresh perspective, to think about things differently?

The motto ringing true in my life recently is new is always better. New thoughts. New perspectives. New world views.

 

Stay Positive & It’s Not So Much What You Pick Up, It’s Why

(HT to Alex & Maggie)

“One More Thing”

Garth Beyer

is the sign of someone who’s uncertain, afraid, and, more often than not, making things complicated.

If you’re shooting for efficiency, simplicity, and certainty, listen to the fellow who says, “one less thing.”

 

Stay Positive & Less Really Is More

Things To Consider About Getting Ahead

Garth Beyer

These work. They always have. They’re simply often forgotten.

1) Do what others won’t. I don’t mean clean the toilets or put in more hours than them. I mean do things others don’t even think of doing. Think outside your span of present duties.

2) You can’t rely on others to tell each other (or your boss) about your awesomeness, you have to tell them yourself. You can talk about what you’ve accomplished without it sounding as if you’re egotistical.

Just like Michael and I discussed on the latest In The Box Podcast episode, you can either complain about grunt work by saying how much you dislike it or you can joke about how terrible it is.

The same goes for talking about work you’ve done that matters. There’s the bragging way and there’s the extremely proud, emotionally light way of sharing the feeling of accomplishment with another person.

3) Find ways to give to those around you. Pulling from the past, here’s three things you can always give – no money or baking skills required.

 

Stay Positive & Get Ahead, It’s Where You Belong