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Brains On Fire Blog

Fascinating, Inspiring, Rewarding and Engaging kinded spirits.

Where’s love when you need it?Yesterday

Or “where are our fans now?” That’s a question I bet GM, Ford and Chrysler are asking these days. As three organizations who could use a little love and support right now, I can’t help but feel mixed emotions for them, including disgust at the their greed and pity at how lonely and sad the CEOs look to me. They just seem like lost souls.

We do a lot of talking about LOVE at Brains on Fire. “Love is circular transaction. Love the people who love you and they will love you back. The cool thing about love is that it always makes it’s way back to those who give it away. No one can grow the love for something like the people who love it most…” Almost every strategy presentation or speaking presentation we give has the word LOVE in it. (John Moore actually just made a remark to us today and said that he was amazed a the amount of LOVE and energy and time we put in the work we do.)

We believe we are helping organizations find and support the passions of the people with the most authentic potential to love them. In good times and bad. And even when you make mistakes.

So where are the Ford, GM and Chrysler lovers out there? There are lots of fans of the Mustang or Jeeps or Corvette. They love the product, but almost seem to dis-associate it from the manufacturer. Try and find someone who lov

Does size matter?December 3

My nephew Chad just wrote me an email about a project he’s working on and he made an interesting remark:

“Church members in smaller services sing louder per person than larger ones because they sense a greater responsibility to make a joyful noise. That isn’t as much a measure on anyone’s faith as it is a reflection of an individual’s own self-awareness.”

One of the questions we are often asked when we go out and tell our story and share our beliefs on the power of igniting movements is this: How can you justify such enormous time and effort on what seems like relatively small numbers of people (“loving” and supporting thousands of engaged loud and proud advocates vs. “reaching” hundreds of thousands or millions in a given demographic segment through traditional media.)

I’m still chewin’ on Chad’s comment, which was totally unrelated to building communities or igniting movements, but it got me thinking.

According to Beeline’s research, Fiskateers with over 5000+ engaged, loud and proud scrapbookers is large. (Beeline Labs’ Chart from The Tribalization of Businesses 2008 is above.)

Here’s

Did we stress connecting OFFline enough yet?December 2

As if we didn’t talk about it enough already, here’s even more proof: Our own Eric Dodds dug up this year-old article that comes from the British Association Festival of Science – “Social networking sites don’t deepen friendships.”

The gist of the article is here:

“Although the numbers of friends people have on these sites can be massive, the actual number of close friends is approximately the same in the face to face real world,” said Will Reader at Sheffield Hallam University.

In other words, connecting online is great. But what you’re doing is forming acquaintances. People you might recognize and say “hey” to. (Or even more realistic, those people who you ask, “How are you?” and they reply, “Fine.”) But not stop and have a deep conversation with.

Now let me take it one step further and apply this to brands getting involved in online social networking sites. For a lot of them, it’s a numbers game. “How many people can we get to be “fans” on our Facebook page or friends on our MySpace page?” But these are mere acquaintances with the hope of maybe, somehow driving transactions. There’s no intent for a real, deep, relationship.

The article goes on to say that “90% of contacts that the subjects regarded as close friends were people they had met face to face.” That’s nine-oh percent. Wow. So now you say to me, “S

It’s a ProcessDecember 1

As we’re revamping our website as part of “Miracle on River Street,” we’re going through that sometimes painful progression of putting our process into words to better define what we do. And in a quick tour around the interwebs, here are some typical lines out of the process section of creative websites (the company names were removed to protect the, uh, innocent):

Our process begins with a simple directive… Doubt the conventional.

Marketing isn’t communication. It’s behavior.

We believe that to achieve consumer brand engagement, two-way, honest communication with a trusted source is paramount!

X company’s proprietary methodologies and technology provides the roadmap, discipline and tools to create X.

We begin our relationship by thoroughly immersing ourselves in your brand.

We tailor our process to meet the distinct needs and objectives of each business.

Our mission is to help create new brand names for our clients so that they can create new markets.

Our approach includes the development of a creative strategy that supports your vision and leads us to a name that will make a difference.

Hmmm. And haven’t you noticed that most processes come in three parts? Like some sort of Discovery. Then Envisioning. Then Implementation. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing. And I’m not saying that the above processes are bad, either. I’m just saying that there are so many creative companies in

Brains on Fire gives thanksNovember 26

For just about everything…

And what random thing are you thankful for?